Art Spiegelman! Squee!

The past month has been just fab in feeding my Art Spiegelman fangirl frenzy. First I found that enormous Art Spiegelman book on bargain at a book store sale after last month’s book discussion.

Then my cousin (and bookish partner in crime) Dianne got me an autographed Maus II (and a Strand notebook, and a Great Writers deck of cards) from her trip to New York. And then Flipper friend Mike (who actually made an Art Spiegelman fangirl out of me when he lent me his Maus set) brought me back an Art Spiegelman Strand totebag (and a Strand button pin) showing Maus “stranded in a sea of books”!

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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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Book Belt

In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Hagrid sends Harry a peculiar birthday gift: the Monster Book of Monsters, a textbook that attempts to bite anyone who tries to open it. Harry binds it with a belt, and the other students keep it shut with Spellotape. This Harry Potter moment came to mind when I spotted a new book thingamajig at a Daiso store in Singapore: the book belt.

It’s actually a glorified piece of patterned garter sewn together with a felt band, and I bought it primarily because I’m a sucker for all sorts of book paraphernalia (as you well know), and I only got to try it recently. For 2 SGD (standard Daiso price), you get a pack of two book bands (I gave one to my FFP seezter Ajie) that can fit both mass market paperbacks and trade paperbacks.

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The Blood Stone


I spotted Jamila Gavin’s The Blood Stone in a bargain bin some months back; the squarish shape of the book caught my eye. Then I read the back of the book and I was even more intrigued — it promised “a dazzling whirlwind of a journey, over seas and across the desert, into the very heart of danger,” and the clincher — it starts out in Venice, one of my all-time favorite settings for a novel (yes, I judge the book by the setting)! At P40 (less than $1), I couldn’t pass.

I went on a daytrip out of town for work, and the first book I grabbed off the shelf happened to be this one, and I ended up finishing the novel even before I made it back to the city.

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Beatrice and Virgil


Life of Pi by Yann Martel will always be a memorable book for me, after we read it for the first Flips Flipping Pages book discussion in 2008. I was really sad when my brothe r borrowed my copy of the book and it ended up getting eaten by termites at his college dorm, but I got a surprise from bookish friend Triccie who gave me a deluxe illustrated edition for my birthday last year.

I enjoyed Life of Pi for its rhetoric on perception and Martel’s intelligent humor, which came unexpected for me — I wouldn’t have picked it up if not for my book club’s discussion. I also enjoyed Tomislav Torjanac’s vibrant illustrations.

I got to review Martel’s new novel Beatrice and Virgil recently, and found that I really enjoy Martel’s writing. Read on for my review, first published on Manila Bulletin.

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