Year: 2010

The Clone (or what I brought home from MIBF Day Two)


As my longtime readers would probably know, I’ve been looking for new lighting gadgets for my bedtime reading, as my Harry Potter Lumos Lightwedge is hopelessly out of commission (battery leaked and stuck to the very narrow terminal and won’t budge!) and I managed to disembowel my Really Tiny Book Light after just a couple of months (the flimsy light is now in two broken pieces; what a rip-off).

I didn’t get to spend much time at the Book Fair today (mostly busy working at the co-located events and running after people to interview), so I only got a couple of books (will tell you about them in another post) but I managed to spot a  “Light Panel” (read: Lightwedge clone) in one of the booths.  I was pretty desperate because I have been living without a reading light for some months now and it’s been driving me crazy, and the thing was only P100 so I decided to get it.

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Day One at MIBF 2010


Just got home from the first day of the 31st Manila International Book Fair. The opening day always goes by in a flurry for me (most of the work is concentrated on this day), but I know a lot of you are waiting for updates so I’m doing a Day One post so you can get a feel of this year’s book fair.

I’m sorry I don’t have a lot of photos for day 1, I didn’t have much time to go around or browse — I only managed to pick up a bunch of books half an hour before closing, imagine! In general the rough guide I posted yesterday doesn’t miss the mark, but I’ll list down the promos (that I remember from today) in this post.

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The Rough Guide to the 31st Manila International Book Fair

The past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of activity, and before I knew it, voila — it’s now the eve of the opening of the much-awaited Manila International Book Fair, the biggest book event in the country!

Now I know a lot of you have been waiting for the rough guide to this year’s book fair like the one I posted last year. A bit of the background — the nature of my work requires me to attend the Manila International Book Fair year after year (contrary to popular belief I  don’t actually get to shop until the last few days!), and this is the sixth year running now. While I generally make my rounds, I do have some top picks for the must-see booths.

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Mini Shopaholic


It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Sophie Kinsella, and as soon as I heard there was another book in the Shopaholic series coming out in early September, I started skulking around bookstores to get my copy.

Mini Shopaholic is the sixth book in Kinsella’s wildly popular Shopaholic series, following the books The Confessions of a Shopaholic (in UK it’s The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic), Shopaholic Takes Manhattan (UK Shopaholic Abroad), Shopaholic Ties the Knot, Shopaholic and Sister, and Shopaholic and Baby.

While my favorite Sophie Kinsella books are outside of the Shopaholic series (I love Undomestic Goddess, and the last one, Twenties Girl), Becky Bloomwood has grown on me as I read the novels. I was a bit outraged at her addiction to shopping in the first two books, but well, later on, I realized there’s a little Becky Bloomwood inside of me: the book shopper (hahaha!). And I really love the supporting cast in the series —  the dreamy Luke Brandon, the delightful Suze and Tarkie, the oddballs Jess and Tom, Becky’s folks Jane and Graham, their next-door neighbor Janice, the wild and wacky designer Danny Kovitz, and dear old Derek Smeath!

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Mockingjay Giveaway!

I meant to do this earlier, but September is always the busiest month in my year so this month’s posts have been sporadic at best…

Anyway, I have an extra copy of Mockingjay, the final book in the Hunger Games trilogy, a complimentary copy from Scholastic (because I co-moderated the discussion at the Mockingjay launch party), so I’m raffling it off.

Check out the mechanics after the cut.

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