Crazy over the cut-price sale!

The annual National Book Store Cut-Price sale is on!

I’ve been shopping at the NBS cut-price sale since I was in college, and I always manage to take home a great haul over the  three-week sale season. I’ve even developed a strategy for it over the years — I’ve learned to pace myself, because otherwise I’ll just go crazy (not to mention broke).

I spend the first week scoping out a couple of branches, and I usually don’t buy anything (unless it’s something I absolutely must have for my collection); I just check out the books on sale. And then I do my first round of shopping at the one branch, where I do the bulk of my cut-price purchases. Over the next few days, when I have the chance, I drop by the different branches, and see if there are one or two books I still want to buy. And then, at the tail end, I drop by another branch and scrounge for more books — sometimes the prices drop towards the end of the sale!

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Queen of Babble Gets Hitched

I’ve been following Meg Cabot’s Queen of Babble series for some years now, but was only recently able to get ahold of the third book, Queen of Babble Gets Hitched via some very kind moochers on BookMooch.

Lizzie Nichols has always been a charming protagonist, and I’ve enjoyed reading the first two books in the series — Queen of Babble, and Queen of Babble in the Big City. Lizzie is a a twenty-something with old-fashioned sensibilities, and a talent for restoring vintage dresses. The series follows her life (and lovelife) as she ventures out of her hometown and away from her family to make it on her own.

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Reading time!

I’m not  a terribly vain person, but there is a reason I like going to the salon — I get some reading done! The, erm, “beautification” is an added bonus.

This year has kept me pretty busy that I’ve rarely had time to read for very long, and I have to consciously jump at all opportunities for reading, including, to the amusement of my officemates, that snippet of time after the afternoon bell has rung, and I’m waiting for the rest of them to shut down their terminals and pack up their stuff.

Anyway, last weekend, I threw some books into a totebag and headed to the salon for a hair rebond. I get my hair rebonded once a year, because it saves a lot of time fussing about hair all year round and drastically reduces the frequency of bad hair days (especially in the humidity!).

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Vintage Novelties


I don’t often read non-fiction, and when I do, they’re mostly palate-cleansers, e.g. books I read in between books when I get bogged down by lengthy reads, and more often than not, they’re either trivia books or novelty books.

Now, I can never resist pretty books, and I love vintage art, so I’ve got a growing collection of novelty books that feature vintage ephemera. Four more were added to my collection recently: Cheap Laffs: The Art of the Novelty Item by Mark Newgarden and Picture Box, Inc., which I recently unearthed from my TBR (bought it two years ago, it was still wrapped in its plastic casing); Let’s Be Safe by Benjamin Darling (via BookMooch); Fireside: A Family Companion by Janice Anderson (book sale bargain bin, for P25); and What the Doctor Smokes and other inspiring adverts through the ages by Kate Parker and the Advertising Archives (Powerbooks Book Barter).

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Book Parade!

When I was in grade school, my favorite time of the year was Book Week. We had our DEAR  (Drop Everything And Read) time, and I remember we would goof around, literally dropping whatever we were holding and racing for the reading corner of the classroom. There was also one year when our class put on a “Little Mermaid” play, and I originally played Flounder, and then I had a wardrobe malfunction wherein my mishappen blue and yellow crepe paper costume fell to pieces during rehearsal (I had no idea how to make a fish costume — I stapled the crepe paper all around me and I think I ended up looking like Boo from Monsters, Inc. in her monster suit) so I ended up playing Scuttle (the seagull) at the play.

The part I looked forward to the most was the mini-book fair (yes, I was a bargain book hunter even way back in grade school) where some booksellers would lay out books on long tables and there were some really nice books to be had for as low as P5, P10, and P15. Every year I would get a hundred bucks from my dad to spend at Book Week, and then I saved my allowance for the week (I spent all of recess browsing through the books anyway!) so I could buy myself more books! I got a lot of books from those book fairs, including comic books (Peanuts, Family Circus, Grimmy, and Rose is Rose), trivia books, Sweet Valley  books (of course!), and those little square origami books with free folding paper in them!

Anyway, this flood of memories was unleashed when I saw a bunch of photos on my brother’s computer. My brother Enzo teaches English and Religion classes at the Tuloy sa Don Bosco Foundation, an organization for poor, abandoned, at-risk, and homeless children. Last month was Book Month at the school, and they had a lot of book-reading activities, topped off with a book parade involving all their students. These kids don’t have very much, but check out the photos — they definitely prove that a little imagination goes a long, long way!!!

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