Reading something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue
Bargain Books
1st Scholastic Clearance Sale!
Aug 23rd
Here’s an announcement from Scholastic, one I know my bookish friends have been eagerly awaiting:
Cats!
Aug 22nd
I read T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats last year and found out it was the book on which the musical Cats was based. I didn’t think I would get to see the musical on its Manila run because the tickets are fabulously expensive, but a couple of orchestra tickets magically fell into my hands on Friday afternoon, courtesy of my boss (thank you! thank you!), so my sister and I got to watch the musical that same night.
Cats is one of the longest-running shows in the history of musical theater. Its composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, counts Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats as one of his favorite childhood books, and most of the musical is based on the cats in Eliot’s verse, except mainly Grizabella the glamor cat (who has grown old and gray) and a few other cats, who (presumably) were written in to tie the story together.
Suzanne Collins Marathon
Aug 18th
Still counting down to Mockingjay!
In an attempt to slake my excitement over Mockingjay, I brought out all the Suzanne Collins books in my possession (and bought one more) and have been reading voraciously for the past five days. I started with Gregor the Overlander, the first book of the Underland Chronicles last Friday, but I didn’t have book 2 yet so I decided to reread Hunger Games and Catching Fire on Saturday. By Sunday, I was already reaching for the copy of Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane that I’d bought the day before. And then I started reading Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods yesterday, and now I’m out of the Underland Chronicles, so the marathon’s on hold (at least until I can find myself copies of Gregor and the Marks of Secret and Gregor and the Code of the Claw).
Warehouse Raid!
Aug 15th
I hadn’t been planning on going to the Books for Less warehouse sale, because it’s quite far from my usual haunts and I had no idea how to get there. But when Flipper friend Marie asked if I wanted to go, I readily agreed — when it comes to book hunting, I really don’t need to be asked twice!
We met at another bookstore around mid-afternoon — I just had to get a copy of Suzanne Collins’ Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane, because I already finished book 1 and I had book 3 waiting at home. Then we took the MRT to EDSA Shangri-la, where fellow Flipper Jan (thanks, Jan!) would pick us up so we could all go together (Jan discovered the warehouse sale earlier this week and reported that she had gotten over 20 books, so we were all curious about it!).
Crazy over the cut-price sale!
Aug 8th
The annual National Book Store Cut-Price sale is on!
I’ve been shopping at the NBS cut-price sale since I was in college, and I always manage to take home a great haul over the three-week sale season. I’ve even developed a strategy for it over the years — I’ve learned to pace myself, because otherwise I’ll just go crazy (not to mention broke).
I spend the first week scoping out a couple of branches, and I usually don’t buy anything (unless it’s something I absolutely must have for my collection); I just check out the books on sale. And then I do my first round of shopping at the one branch, where I do the bulk of my cut-price purchases. Over the next few days, when I have the chance, I drop by the different branches, and see if there are one or two books I still want to buy. And then, at the tail end, I drop by another branch and scrounge for more books — sometimes the prices drop towards the end of the sale!
Vintage Novelties
Aug 5th
I don’t often read non-fiction, and when I do, they’re mostly palate-cleansers, e.g. books I read in between books when I get bogged down by lengthy reads, and more often than not, they’re either trivia books or novelty books.
Now, I can never resist pretty books, and I love vintage art, so I’ve got a growing collection of novelty books that feature vintage ephemera. Four more were added to my collection recently: Cheap Laffs: The Art of the Novelty Item by Mark Newgarden and Picture Box, Inc., which I recently unearthed from my TBR (bought it two years ago, it was still wrapped in its plastic casing); Let’s Be Safe by Benjamin Darling (via BookMooch); Fireside: A Family Companion by Janice Anderson (book sale bargain bin, for P25); and What the Doctor Smokes and other inspiring adverts through the ages by Kate Parker and the Advertising Archives (Powerbooks Book Barter).
Judging a book by the cover
Aug 1st
I have a confession to make: I judge books by the cover.
I can’t help myself — I trawl through dozens of bargain books several times a week, and I browse through book covers to “separate the wheat from the chaff,” so to speak, especially if I don’t recognize the book title or the author. And then when the cover captures my fancy, that’s the only time I’ll scan through the rest of the data: title, author, and the blurb.
It saves a lot of time, and the method has worked for me so far.
Another confession, and this is freakier: when I’m in a big hurry, I even judge books by the spine! I can actually spot the spines of certain book series I collect off the bat, I’ve practiced the cursory scan enough times to pick out the books I like!
And another confession — when I really like a book, I collect different covers that I like, which is how I came to amass a collection of over a hundred Harry Potter books in different languages!
Because I’m totally engrossed in reading book 3 of the Millennium trilogy, I’ll leave you with an article I wrote for Manila Bulletin Students and Campuses section this weekend. Feel free to add your thoughts on the subject in the comments section!
Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman!
Jul 30th
I was watching an episode of The Big Bang Theory where Leonard celebrates his birthday, and Wollowitz presents him with a signed copy of Feynman’s Lectures on Physics. By then I’d watched enough BBT episodes to know that Richard Feynman won a Nobel Prize for Physics (and is somewhat of a god to theoretical physicists), but I had a nagging feeling I’d come across that name somewhere else.
Last week, I was rooting through my shelves for a book to swap at the FFP book discussion, when I spotted a book I’d forgotten about, a copy of Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character), a semi-autobiographical collection of stories narrated by Feynman, caught on tape by his friend Ralph Leighton. I’d gotten it for about P30 at a Scholastic warehouse sale last year, and I got it mainly because the cover looked interesting and I had a bag to fill, but I had no idea what it was about.
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