Bookish Christmas

Happy Christmas, book lovers! I hope you’re enjoying the holidays with your loved ones.

Mine’s especially bookish this year. I didn’t have time to put up a tree (remember last year’s HP Christmas tree?), but a friend (thanks, Carl!) got me an ornament tree so I put it to good use on top of one of my bookshelves — I’ve always wanted a Nutcracker Christmas tree!

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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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Guilty Pleasure: Special Edition HP

I couldn’t resist. After six months of longingly staring at it on the bookstore shelf, I finally took home my very own copy of the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone Special 10th Year Anniversary Edition, using part of my Book Geek winnings.

If you’ve just “tuned in” to my blog, well, I’m a big Harry Potter fan (^_^), and I collect different editions of Harry Potter books, even in languages I can’t read. I haven’t counted recently, but I think I’m up to nearly a hundred different Harry Potter books (I know, I know, I owe the readers of this blog a nice long pictorial entry on my collection, but I am still scrounging for time to do that).

While my ultimate dream is the collector’s edition of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, I have resigned myself to the impossibility of that for the moment, so this is the next best thing (or so I try to tell myself).

It’s practically the same as the hardbound US edition except for the dustjacket, clothcover, and the front matter.

Here are the photos (because I know my Flipper friends have been waiting to see this!):


Harry
dust jacket with special Mary Grand Pre art
Spines
Red clothcover with gilt stars
brand-new frontispiece, also by Mary Grand Pre
Copyright page
My favorite part: an early sketch of Snape by J.K. Rowling
and a little intro by JKR

P.S. Speaking of Harry Potter, here’s a hilarious video Dianne showed me yesterday. Enjoy!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuEAJFnMIjk]

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My copy: hardcover with dustjacket

My rating: 5/5 stars