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With over 15,000 physical books in his collection, three-time Palanca awardee and lawyer, Raymundo “Rayboy” T Pandan has always loved reading. His passion started at a very young age. “When I was a boy, I read a lot. The first book I remember reading was by Agatha Christie, The Postern of Fate. I was sick and I would usually get comics from my mum, but this time she gave me a book and I finished it in a couple of hours. From that point on, I really loved books,” shares Pandan. But what really opened his eyes to great writing was Reader’s Digest’s Great Short Stories of the World. This continued up to this day, finishing one book a week to keep his mind sharp.
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For Pandan, reading and writing go hand in hand. Something that every writer would be envious of is that he does not know what writer’s block is. “I never have any trouble sitting down and writing. I think it’s because I’m aware that what I write is not perfect. I believe for a writer, you need a certain kind of humility to admit that when you’re writing something, it won’t always look good on paper. In a sense, it’s about not requiring yourself to be better than anyone else... Some people write because they want to. I write because I need to.”
Inspired by the words of the English author, EM Forster, who said—“The humanist has four leading characteristics: curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and a belief in the human race”—Pandan swears by these four characteristics and bases his entire being and writing on them.
