My cousin Dianne and I love bargain book hunting; the cheaper, the better. Our favorite haunt is Book Sale, a bargain book store chain with lots of branches across the metro and even in the provincial malls. No week goes by without at least one visit to a Book Sale branch (or else we suffer from withdrawal symptoms), so we pretty much have our own system of trawling through the wonderful jumble of books for bargain treasures.

We were gabbing on the phone last Friday when we got the crazy idea of hopping through various Book Sale outlets across the MRT-EDSA line to go bargain book hunting. We set a generous budget of P500, roped Flipper friend Marie into joining us, and set off on Saturday morning for our book hunt.

We plotted out several stations on the MRT-3 Line that had Book Sale branches.

 

 

We went to six branches in all: Farmer’s Plaza and Shopwise in Cubao, EDSA Central and Star Mall along Shaw Boulevard, AlphaLand in Magallanes and Makati Cinema Square along Pasong Tamo. Originally we included the Megamall branch (in between Ortigas and Shaw Stations) but we were so exhausted after the first leg that we decided to bypass it.

I kept well under the ceiling budget because it wasn’t a good time to go Book Sale hopping — the stores were freshly stocked with multiple copies of certain titles, not yet marked down, indicating a new shipment still in circulation (in a month or so, we bet they’ll be marked down :D) so there weren’t as many bargain books on hand.

I got five books and some nice stationery, Dianne got twice the number of books I did, while Marie steadfastly bought just the one book (originally she swore she wouldn’t buy anything!), but we all still managed to have a lot of fun.

Here, some photos from our book hunt:

 

Here’s Dianne with her first batch of books

 

I got this nifty stationery set for P40!

 

Marie, making her way to another Book Sale branch

 

Another plushie book for my collection!

 

Dianne, engrossed in a culinary magazine

 

Marie and her Borges

 

A fluffy murder mystery and another Eloise book for my collection

 

Weary bookhunters having their steak!

 

And the last of my loot: a hardcover Madeleine L’Engle and a book on French words.

 

Bargain book hunting is always fun, whether you bring home one book or ten! We’re planning another book hunt, maybe next month, in another part of the metro (SM Manila – Rob Place – Pedro Gil – Times Plaza – Harrison Plaza) — holler if you want to join us! :)