Year: 2010

Book hunting marathon #1

 

 

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.

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Figgs and Phantoms

 

 

Ellen Raskin’s The Westing Game is one of my all-time favorite books, and one of the books in contention for the most number of readings award on my bookshelf.  Recently, I realized I haven’t read anything else written by Raskin so I decided to mooch a copy of Figgs and Phantoms. I read this a few months ago and was waiting to read a book I could match with it for a thematic review, but I don’t think that will happen soon, so here I am reviewing it solo.

Figgs and Phantoms won the Newbery Honor in 1975 before Westing Game won the Newbery Medal in 1979.

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Bookish Blackout!

 

 

On Tuesday night, I was pounding out a blog entry when my mom told me to go to bed because there was a storm brewing (typhoon Basyang). I was actually packing up my stuff already; the chilly wind was blowing into the living room and I was getting goosebumps. Of course, because I’m now paranoid, I had to check that I had no books at flood level before heading upstairs.

I’d no sooner climbed into bed when the power went out, and the wind started howling something awful, rattling the window panes and galvanized iron roofs from nearby. Our dog Macky started whimpering from the stairs so I grabbed my flashlight to take him up to the room. Our cat Missy was already burrowing into my mom’s blankets for warmth (she hates being cold).

I fell into a fitful sleep, worrying about falling trees and flying rooftops, and woke up to the sound of my brother telling my mom the upstairs bathroom was a mess — the window was open and the ceiling was detached, hanging by the wiring of the lamp in the center. I got out of bed and there was sludge all over the toiletries!

Still no power by then so I marched off to the bathroom downstairs to get ready for work. There were a few inches of floodwater in the street so I had to tiptoe across the sidewalk!

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Tintin times three

 

(Sorry for the delayed post — had no electricity for over 24 hours due to that last storm!)

This weekend was my first free weekend in a long, long while, and it was spent vegging out, bargain book hunting, and watching more episodes of The Big Bang Theory (as well as Bounty Hunter and I Hate Valentine’s Day). I wasn’t in the mood for heavy-duty reading, but I did manage to squeeze in the three Tintin comics I bought (20% off!) during Free Comic Book Day: The Seven Crystal Balls, Land of Black Gold, and Tintin and the Picaros.

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Are you ready for this?

 

 

The Manila International Book Fair is set on Sept. 15-19 at the SMX Convention Center! Woot! Woot! (*happydancing*)

Mark your calendars, bibliophiles (and start saving your shopping money), as the biggest and longest-running book fair in the Philippines turns 31 this year. For three decades now, MIBF has been a one-stop shop for local and foreign publishers, wholesalers, retailers, book lovers and collectors, librarians, authors, and publishers’ representatives. It has also continuously contributed to the reading awareness of the Filipino by being the venue for book launches, dialogues with readers, and other book-related activities that reach out to a wide audience.

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