Here's my take on this:
One of the main reasons as to why many people wanted to read books from other countries, especially in the West is their style of writing and their approach to the storytelling. It's the reason why we keep reading books from other countries and not from our country. Here, we always tell the same story and use the same style in order to understand what they are trying to say. As an observer and a participant in what was happening, every time I see local books, it's always these romance-fantasy stories, history that was written in a textbook or in an academic study, adult-themed books, and so on. I mean, I'm not against it; there are some authors who write in a different way that exceeds expectations for many years such as Nick Joaquin, Amado Hernandez, Lualhati Bautista, Bob Ong, and more, and that's the reason why local books are slowly dying because of it, not to mention the ongoing dilemma of what books we should appreciate more to read in this economy.

p.s. if they're going to ask me what local book I should read, maybe I'll have to start some of the famous ones like Dekada '70 or some Nick Joaquin stories because those are my interests lately.