Reading something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue
Happy Christmas, book lovers! I hope you’re enjoying the holidays with your loved ones.
Mine’s especially bookish this year. I didn’t have time to put up a tree (remember last year’s HP Christmas tree?), but a friend (thanks, Carl!) got me an ornament tree so I put it to good use on top of one of my bookshelves — I’ve always wanted a Nutcracker Christmas tree!
I never dog-ear pages — it destroys the fibers of the page — but I rarely go out of my way to buy bookmarks because I tend to forget them inside the book I’m reading. I have a small pile of freebie bookmarks, too — my sister collects for me from various counters in Singapore, I get a lot of bookmarks from the annual Manila International Book Fair, and a lot of BookMoochers send bookmarks too (aside from the official Bookmooch bookmarks)
When I don’t have a bookmark on hand, I can pretty much use anything thin enough to slip in between the pages — a tissue, an old receipt, clothing labels, or I commit the page number to memory, so I really don’t need to buy bookmarks.
Once I interviewed someone for an article I was writing, and I completely forgot that I used his business card as a bookmark! I’d turned my bag inside out, and rifled through my work desk looking for it because I needed to get back to the person I interviewed, and it wasn’t until a couple of nights later that I remembered I had tucked it inside the last book I finished. Hehe. After that, I’ve been careful not to use business cards (or cheques) as bookmarks.
On a visit to one of my favorite book sale branches last week, I chanced upon some great bookmarks at really great prices, and I couldn’t resist getting some. I ended up buying two books (for mooching, none for me) and a whole bag of assorted bookmarks!
If you’ve just “tuned in” to my blog, well, I’m a big Harry Potter fan (^_^), and I collect different editions of Harry Potter books, even in languages I can’t read. I haven’t counted recently, but I think I’m up to nearly a hundred different Harry Potter books (I know, I know, I owe the readers of this blog a nice long pictorial entry on my collection, but I am still scrounging for time to do that).
While my ultimate dream is the collector’s edition of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, I have resigned myself to the impossibility of that for the moment, so this is the next best thing (or so I try to tell myself).
It’s practically the same as the hardbound US edition except for the dustjacket, clothcover, and the front matter.
Here are the photos (because I know my Flipper friends have been waiting to see this!):
Harry
dust jacket with special Mary Grand Pre art
Spines
Red clothcover with gilt stars
brand-new frontispiece, also by Mary Grand Pre
Copyright page
My favorite part: an early sketch of Snape by J.K. Rowling
and a little intro by JKR
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuEAJFnMIjk]
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My copy: hardcover with dustjacket
My rating: 5/5 stars
