I wasn’t always a book hoarder, but l’ve always loved to read. I was born and raised in the Philippines in a family of readers, and my siblings and I grew up reading Enid Blyton, the Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, and the Hardy Boys. But we also read children’s classics — I have fond memories of my Ate (older sis) and I taking an hour-long bus ride, backpacks in tow, to this dome-shaped building dwarfed by skyscrapers, right in the very heart of the financial district. It was a church founded over a century ago for American expatriates, and inside was a little library — a regular library to everyone else, but THE Secret Garden to me. We filled our backpacks with Black Beauty and the like, and devoured them at home before our next trip to this magical place.