Miscellany – Page 20

The Hunger Games LARP (Live Action Role Play)

After Harry Potter, it was hard for me to imagine myself getting all worked up over another book series… until I read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (read my review to find out why).

I was skimming through the special events listings of the Manila International Book Fair when something caught my eye: The Hunger Games Live Action Role Play (LARP), set on the last day of the book fair, sponsored by Scholastic, Inc., National Book Store in partnership with New Worlds Alliance.

Now I normally don’t go to the last day of the book fair because I’m all shopped out by the time Saturday rolls around, but I made sure to be there this year, even though I’d read Catching Fire well past midnight the night before, because I just couldn’t put it down, and ended up red-eyed with all the crying and desperate to fast forward to 2010 when the third book is set for release (Aieee!!!).

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Reading in the 21st century

Reading never goes out of style, even in the age of technology.

In the August 1894 issue of Scribner’s magazine, an article by Octave Uzanne, predicted “The End of Books,” proposing that in the 20^th century, the printed page will be replaced by “storyographs,” patented cylinders containing recordings of books, and writers replaced by “Narrators” that read stories aloud for the recordings. Uzanne imagines today’s libraries transformed into “phonographotecks” or “phonostereoteks,” repositories for the “storyographs.” He also imagined portable players that he called “pocket phono-opera-graphs.”

While Uzanne’s predictions almost accurately cover audiobooks, ebooks, mp3 players, and personal ebook readers, he was wrong on one count: the introduction of these technologies did not herald the end of books, but rather gives the 21^st century person new ways to enjoy the printed page, enhancing the reading experience for the page-turner.

The Manila International Book Fair lists the top reading technologies, proving just how relevant reading still is in the 21^st century.

As the Manila International Book Fair, the paramount event of the Philippine book industry, marks its 30^th anniversary this year on Sept 16-20 at the SMX Convention Center, it once again welcomes book lovers to celebrate it celebrates the written word in all its forms.

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And the winner is (My Deathly Hallows Giveaway)…

Thank you to all those who joined my Deathly Hallows Giveaway! I received 45 entries in total, and using a random list generator, I assigned random numbers to all the giveaway entries.

I was supposed to post this tomorrow, but I’ve got a health book discussion (and a bikram yoga session) with my book club, Flips Flipping Pages, so I decided to announce the winners tonight.

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A Bookworm in Cebu

I didn’t have any posts up last weekend because I had to fly to Cebu on Friday night on a business trip, to cover the Pasigarbo sa Sugbo Festival hosted by the provincial government at the Cebu International Convention Center.

I’ve been to Cebu at least once a year in the past four years (second time this year), but always for work, with a bit of leisure crammed in. Always hopeful for some reading time, I packed three books, although to no avail. For some reason, when I have several books with me I never find the time to read, and when I don’t have any books with me I end up with absolutely nothing to do!

I didn’t have much time to go around because our activities were packed (I wish I can go to Cebu for fun next time!), but I managed to squeeze in some bookish time– finished one book, went to a couple of Book Sale branches and got a bunch of books, scoped out some bookish items at the trade fair, and met up with a Flipper friend!

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A bunch of bookmarks

mark

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!

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