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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Loot!

It’s been a busy couple of weeks, and I hardly had time to sit down to blog over the weekend… or the past few days, as things are going crazy outside of my blogging life. But in the meantime, here’s a photo from our weekend raid at the Scholastic warehouse sale!

(Sorry, no warehouse photos, we just went ga-ga at the sight of the books… typical!!! Haha, when you’re with a pack of bargain book hunters, you have to move fast or miss out on the spoils! )

loot

The figures:

1 Sunday morning
1  warehouse sale
4 book addicts
2 hours of browsing
over 70 books
3 bags nearly splitting at the seams (at P795 each)

Totally exhausting, but so much worth it!

My loot:

Twelve books, coming down to a grand total of P360 (around US $7),  petering out to P30 ($0.70) each. And four of them on my wishlist too!

Squee!

Am in the middle of composing a long-overdue review series, will have it up soon, I promise! :)

A Bookworm in Cebu

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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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