Reading something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue
I couldn’t help it; I had to go back!
I already made off with a pretty hefty loot from the last couple of times I visited the National Book Store Christmas Book Bazaar, but I wanted to catch the last day of the bargain sale so I wouldn’t have any regrets (yes, you can see how seriously I take book sales) afterwards, and I am so glad I went.
I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time in the bookstores in the past couple of weeks, and I’ve seen (read: drooled) enough to make up my Christmas wishlist for this year.
I posted my Christmas wishlist last year and was able to cross out around 75% of them, but the list is shorter this year so if I’m just half as lucky, I’ll be very happy.
No pressure on friends and family; the biggest pressure is actually on me and on my willpower to hold out on Christmas splurging!
I once joined a Harry Potter contest myself — it was a diorama contest for the launch of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and my entry — a papier mache diorama (that took me two weeks to make!) of the first task in the Triwizard Tournament — Harry and the Hungarian Horntail.
I was not supposed to join the contest, but Dianne talked me into it because she planned to submit an entry too. So in a panicky fit, I started making mine, and just when I was halfway through, Dianne tells me she can’t go through with her entry and I was too far in to quit!
A couple of weeks ago, I had just finished posting my recap of the Filipino Book Bloggers’ Meetup and it was well past midnight when I reached for the book I’d started that morning: my signed copy of The Princess Academy by Shannon Hale.
I had started to read the first chapter, but it was a busy day so it got stashed in my bag until I got home. I meant to read just a few chapters before going to bed, but before I knew it, it was 4 in the morning and I’d finished the book!
Just when I thought our book club couldn’t get any geekier, we did, spending half a day touring, in rapt fascination, an exhibit about — yup, you guessed it — books!
It was the morning of our End of the Affair book discussion and we had agreed to meet, at an hour that most of us aren’t even awake yet on a regular Saturday morning, at the University of Santo Tomas Library to view the Lumina Pandit exhibit. Curiosity (and okay, geekiness) won over sleep and so I blearily got into a cab to meet the rest of the Flippers.
I don’t know what the others were expecting, but I was picturing a hall, some artifacts encased in glass, and a cursory viewing of the items on display, so I sure wasn’t prepared for this:
