It's September and it's bargain book sale season in the Philippines with the month-long National Book Store cut-price sale which has been going on for as long as I remember being a bookworm.
Since the start of the sale, I have been to 10 or is that 11 or 12 branches so far: Katipunan Avenue, Trinoma, Quezon Boulevard, Mall of Asia, Avenida, Shang Mall, Podium, Megamall, Greenhills, Eastwood, Greenbelt, Galleria, in the last two or so weeks. And I topped this off by stopping at the Bestsellers store in Galleria after my NBS Galleria raid. It's been a bookstore a day or even 2 a day, after work or as a weekend treat. Great way to keep your mind off the things that you don't want to dwell on, like the looming book deadline and other even bigger things.
What is all the frenzy about... well for bookworms, the scent of a sale is enough to get us going. Books at discounted and even low low prices- that is heaven! I must confess I do like brand new books, the ones that smell freshly minted and so crisp and clean. And I am very partial to hard covers and big books, that's why the library
cum house I live in is full.
But after this dizzying dive into bargain sales I have discovered that I can get more for my money and still have the same hard cover stash, but in greater numbers.
So back to the narrative of what I did in every NBS branch I visited. I started by just sorting through, thinking I would find a good read or two. But when I dug into the P99 bin in the NBS Katipunan branch I was hooked. I think I took home 3 bags of books, my excuse was that it was mostly for adding to my BOOKMOOCH inventory, mostly hard covers that were selling at 99 pesos each. Hardcovers go for at least P1,000+ [$21-$23] when they get to the Philippines!!! And here I was all these years paying full price for books that would get to the P99 bin in a year or even less.
So that first night that I got home I sorted through the books, such a pleasure to open the plastic bags and go through the books one at a time. [I miss my bookstore owner days, especially when the books I ordered arrived. It was my special activity, only I could open the boxes. And sort and tag and mark and wrap :-) Those were the days when I had Libreria.]
After sorting, I realized I didn't have many of the titles [fiction mostly] in my library so I decided to go back and start visiting other branches. On my visit to a third or fourth branch, I encountered a fellow bookmoocher, JoelG, who pointed the way to the p99 bin and spent time talking about our purchases. He also told me about some other titles he had found in other branches. The rest of the bookmooching Filipino addicts shared their own finds online on our Shelfari and Ning discussion groups, and that further fueled the fire.
Among the many treasures I found were The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad, Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, What is the What by Dave Eggers, Divisadero by Michael Ondatje, The Thirteenth Tale, Three Cups of Tea, The Abstinence Teacher, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, Alexander McCall Smith's The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency and other titles, Suite Francaise, and even a Raymond Feist title. At bargain, bargain, bargain prices... in hard cover or at least trade paperback, in great condition.
But finding them wasn't that easy. I sorted, I dug, I kneeled, I dug, I re-arranged and I dug, I table-hopped and I dug, and I went round and back, and I dug again. I kid you not, yesterday in the Greenhills branch I practically fixed the display tables while I was digging. Guess my bookstore owner caring for books will never go away, pity the books all piled and bothered...
The saga is about to end, as the sale reaches its end-stage. While there are 11 more days before the sale ends, most of the branches have little to show and to sell anymore. The last two days were disappointing, like waiting for Christmas and waking to find you skipped a day or a season. For those who want to catch the tail-end, try the Bestsellers store at the top level of Galleria or the Katipunan Avenue branch, they still have a whole table full of P99 books. Sadly, the other branches that I have been to have less than a tabletop to offer... and the good titles are all gone.
But the good news is that the bargain gets better, 20% off on the P99 books in Katipunan Avenue. Good enough reason to try and catch the P99 books while you still can...
I am sure the best friend will have a chuckle and a frown and a word or two to say... I hear you already.
