Category: Miscellany

24-hour Read-A-Thon end-of-event meme

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This is a bit delayed, as the read-a-thon officially ended at 8pm (Philippine time) last night, but my internet was on the fritz for the weekend and I couldn’t even post a midway update.

It was a tough weekend for me as I was up late the night before working on a painting, and then I was out all day for several meetings (I had to read through one of them) until I got home past midnight.  And then I was going to update, but found out I didn’t have an internet connection at home!

I’d like to thank all those who dropped by to wish me well on the reading, though, even though I didn’t have any updates posted. Cheers to all the readers and cheerleaders, and hope to see you again on the next read-a-thon!

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A Sad Goodbye

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Last week, I finally bid farewell to a bunch of books that were damaged in the flood, after my feeble attempts at resuscitation. One of my shelves got submerged in the knee-deep flood that entered our house, and most of the books that were on the lower layer got damaged. I am thanking my lucky stars that I never considered storing my Harry Potter collection downstairs.

Prior to this, while I was in Singapore, my mom had already thrown away a batch of paperbacks that were an indistinct  mess after the flood. When I got back, I still had a couple batches of soggy hardcovers drying out next to to the fridge (where it’s warm), weighing about thrice their original weight due to the water absorbed by the pages.

Last week, my cousin (who’s completing her internship at the Philippine General Hospital) warned me about the dangers of keeping active mold spores inside the house and I was getting paranoid, as my mom and sister  were both nursing a bad cold, so I decided to conquer the pile once and for all.

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Those pesky price stickers

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Some people like to keep the price tags on their books to remind them of the book’s provenance. I’m  not one of them.

Aside from being  a compulsive plastic coverer (I can’t read a book that has not been covered in protective plastic), I’m a price sticker remover, and whenever I buy a new book my nails automatically itch to scrape off the price sticker. It just drives me crazy.

The problem is most price stickers are awfully sticky, and peeling them off takes forever, especially when the adhesive is so sticky that you can’t peel the sticker off as a whole (bookstores, please, do something about this!) and ten minutes later you’re left with a smudgy, sticky mess. It’s also annoying when the price sticker eats into the cover, leaving you with an ugly squarish patch (which is a regular occurence at my favorite bargain bookstore), or lifts some of the gloss from a brand new book.

Because I keep my nails short, they don’t offer much leverage when picking at price stickers, especially the really stubborn ones that refused to budge. So eventually I had to resort to other removal procedures.

Here are are two methods I use to remove price stickers.

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Surviving the deluge

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Finally I’m back blogging. Pardon the lull out here, I actually started this entry last weekend, but I’ve been out of the country for the past week and upon our return I was floored at the chaos left by the floods to actually finish this entry.

My Filipino readers need not ask what I’m referring to, I’m sure we were all affected by typhoon  Ondoy (international name Ketsana) in some way.  To my readers outside the country, you’ve probably heard in the world news that there’s been a bad patch of natural calamities in this part of the world (including the tsunami in Samoa and the earthquake in Indonesia, which was felt all the way to Singapore and nearby areas).

Here’s my story:

Saturday started out innocently — it had rained a fair amount the night before and was still raining when my cousin Dianne came to pick me up for the perfume making workshop we had scheduled as a pre-discussion activity for the Flips Flipping Pages’ September book discussion, which I was supposed to moderate.

Dianne and I went over to Jupiter St., to the company conducting our workshop to reschedule our reservation, as the roads were getting flooded and Flippers from all over the metro were reporting their status. We met Flipper Andrea who was already there, and just decided to have breakfast at a nearby Starbucks.

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Bookish weekend ahead

A great weekend is coming up, with two major events for book lovers.

First up, of course, is the Flips Flipping Pages September book discussion on Patrick Suskind’s Perfume, which I’m moderating.

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We’d love to have you join us, whether you’re already a Flipper or not!

Meanwhile, another bookish event is happening over at Powerbooks Megamall…

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