Tag: book shopping

The Rough Guide to the 31st Manila International Book Fair

The past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of activity, and before I knew it, voila — it’s now the eve of the opening of the much-awaited Manila International Book Fair, the biggest book event in the country!

Now I know a lot of you have been waiting for the rough guide to this year’s book fair like the one I posted last year. A bit of the background — the nature of my work requires me to attend the Manila International Book Fair year after year (contrary to popular belief I  don’t actually get to shop until the last few days!), and this is the sixth year running now. While I generally make my rounds, I do have some top picks for the must-see booths.

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Warehouse Raid!

I hadn’t been planning on going to the Books for Less warehouse sale, because it’s quite far from my usual haunts and I had no idea how to get there. But when Flipper friend Marie asked if I wanted to go, I readily agreed — when it comes to book hunting, I really don’t need to be asked twice!

We met at another bookstore around mid-afternoon — I just had to get a copy of Suzanne Collins’ Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane, because I already finished book 1 and I had book 3 waiting at home. Then we took the MRT to EDSA Shangri-la, where fellow Flipper Jan  (thanks, Jan!) would pick us up so we could all go together (Jan discovered the warehouse sale earlier this week and reported that she had gotten over 20 books, so we were all curious about it!).

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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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Fables and more

Saturday was the Flips Flipping Pages Book Discussion on Bill Willingham’s Fables: Legends in Exile, led by our youngest-ever moderator, 13-year old Paolo.

I read my Fables deluxe edition back in March (I had it signed by James Jean in December) and I enjoyed it a lot, so I was looking forward to discussing it with the Flippers.

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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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