Bargain Books – Page 12

All about Eloise

Eloise is one of my favorite children’s book characters, although not one I know from childhood (unlike Babar, Madeline, Curious George, or Tintin). I only discovered Eloise when I saw the old movie (with Julie Andrews as Nanny) on Disney channel when I was in college and learned that it was based on a book.

Eloise is a feisty six-year old girl living at The Plaza Hotel in New York City (hahaha, like Grandmere in The Princess Diaries, also played by Julie Andrews but in the movie she has a state home on the Genovian embassy grounds) in a book series by Kay Thompson illustrated by Hilary Knight. If you’ve seen Eloise, you’re bound to remember her forever, with the wild hair adorned with a flouncy bow, and the ruffled blouse and jumper ensemble (and pink knickers underneath!).

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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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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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Picture Book Roundup: letters, numbers, and apostrophes

I’ve missed doing picture book roundups, and I don’t think I’ve done a proper one yet this year so here’s a bunch of picture books I’ve enjoyed recently: Stephen T. Johnson’s Alphabet City, its companion book City By Numbers, and The Girl’s Like Spaghetti (Why, you can’t manage without apostrophes!) by Lynne Truss (illustrated by Bonnie Timmons).

The books were shamelessly scavenged, as usual — I’d been wanting a copy of Alphabet City for a long time and finally got it via BookMooch, and shortly after found a copy of City By Numbers for a very cheap P40 (less than $1) at a bargain bookstore. Then a few weeks back, I found Girl’s Like Spaghetti for P35! Wonderful additions to my ragtag picture book collection, none of which I buy brand new or full-priced, tee hee hee.

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In the Shadow of No Towers

Spotting a sale sign at a bookstore always activates a panic button in me. It never fails to elicit that heart-pounding, wide-eyed excitement at the prospect of finding a book to add to my shelf, and after years of practice I think I’m fairly proficient at spotting a gem in the bargain bin. Still, I can never get enough of that heady feeling of getting a great book at an outrageously low price.

Just last month, after the Art inFiction book discussion, the Fully Booked Greenbelt branch was on sale, and because there was a line for our dinner table at Chili’s we couldn’t resist the lure of the bargain tables laid out in the storefront. Something shiny caught my eye as soon as I reached the table. Bingo — In the Shadow of No Towers by Art Spiegelman, and, hold your breath, at 80% off, marked down from P958 to under P200! (around $4, never mind that it’s a bit scuffed, it’s a ginormous board book!).

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