TWO DAYS AGO, April 23 was World Book Day. We salute book authors without whom we might still be climbing trees.

It was on this date in 1616 when three outstanding authors and writers Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, William Shakespeare, and Garcilaso de la Vega died.

Cervantes was a Spaniard, author of the famous “Don Quixote de la Mancha,” Shakespeare was British and known for the very many books he wrote, and de la Vega was an Inca Indian, living in the Andes mountains of Central America.

It was also on this date that many other writers were born or died: Maurice Druon, K. Laxness, Vladimir Nebokov, Joseph Pla, and Manuel Mejia Vallejo.

Early this week, books were also my concerns. It was only late Wednesday I realized that day was World Book Day.

In Manila that Monday afternoon, I told Jimmy Golez we would go to a nearby National Book Store at Greenbelt to browse over whatever good books I could get.

What I got was just “501 Must Read Books.” I bought a book about books. Fitting for the occasion.

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Last Wednesday, April 23, at the Post Office where I picked up a gift from Time Magazine, expecting it was a book I ordered from Reader’s Digest for my youngest grandson, I met George Quine, an Australian who was with a friend at Customs in the Post Office.

Quine had a problem. He was bringing here volumes and volumes of books from Australia to distribute for free to barangay high schools. But last time, he paid P30,000 for the books at Customs.

He was advised to see Gov. Isidro Zayco and have the books consigned to the Governor as donation. I commiserate with Quine.

Books, books, books…. My romance with books started early in life. In high school in Iloilo we spent more time at the USIS library with its complete stock of books. This was in the early 50s. This was the height of the Cold War and the U.S. was fighting the war on Communism through books.

I cannot forget the big letters posted there quoting former U.S. President Thomas Jefferson writing to another former U.S. President John Adams where he wrote, “I can’t live without books.”

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Thomas Carlyle, author of many books, one of them “The French Revolution,” wrote in his “The Hero Is A Man of Letters” that “A true university these days is a collection of books.”

In that same book, Carlyle also wrote, “All that mankind has done are there presently in the pages of books.”

In the early 60s, I was very close to a genius of La Saslle Brother, an American Vernon Poore or Brother D. Gabriel. At the end of a semester it was a requirement for students to get clearances. His instruction, be strict with other requirements but for those who had not returned the books they borrowed from the library, let them keep those books.

He wanted students to have a love for books. Brother Gabriel was a poet, painter, writer, and literary critic. A book lover.

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As repositories of the creativity and output of human thought, books shape and maintain the educational, cultural, and economic fabric of our societies and play multiple and fundamental roles in it.

Revolutions were shaped and promoted by books. The French Revolution followed the works of many French writers of the time, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Diderot, and many others.

The books of Jose Rizal were the factor that developed nationalism in the Filipinos. And so with other countries that chose to break the fetters of the colonizers. English and American pamphleteers made the 1776 Revolution in the U.S. successful.

Preserving these books and promoting them will outline the important role of the thought leaders of their respective time.

Our lament is we don’t have enough books of our own. We just depend on writers from other countries.

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CARP to be extended for an additional 5 years?

I find no objection in it as long as agrarian reform beneficiaries can encumber their lands to a money lender with the right to foreclose it upon failure to pay the loan.

Without financing help, how can a farmer produce enough? Without the fear of being foreclosed and the land taken away from him, how can he learn to be working hard and pay his loan?

Government must also get back the land if land taxes are not paid.

At the rate we are going, we are making many people lazy and making investors afraid to invest in land. If we don’t know we will continue to have food shortages. Especially when 35 years later, our population will double to 180 million.

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