I was on my way to grab some late lunch about twelve hours ago when two males (one in his late teens, the other in his late twenties) accosted me for information, introducing themselves as college fraternity members ostensibly on a mission to have the culprit behind the recent attack of one of their brothers identified by people who were passing by the area where the alleged incident happened. Can you say “modus operandi”? Before they even got the chance to steal my money and my phone and my copies of Looking for Alaska and The Catcher in the Rye (I have the latter with me at all times), I said, “Sorry. I can’t be much help, I’m afraid. I have to meet someone in less than an hour and I still have to eat,” walked out, and jumped into the backseat of a passing taxi. About six hours later, I came home with a bunch of books from three different Fully Booked branches, each with its own 80%-off bargain table. Christopher Isherwood’s The Berlin Stories and Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop are among TIME’s All-Time 100 Novels, so I had to get them. Charles Baxter’s The Feast of Love and Christopher Priest’s The Prestige are both well-designed movie tie-ins, so I also had to get them. Finally, I already had a copy of Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt, but I just couldn’t resist a heavily discounted Vintage Classics edition of the book, or of any novel, for that matter, so I also had to get it. All in all, my bibliomaniacal spree set me back by just under P500. But had my recent acquisitions not been on sale, I would have had to pay well over P2000. Which was just as well, I guess. Better I get held up by bookstores than by shady pseudo-fraternity douchebags, I always say.

I was on my way to grab some late lunch about twelve hours ago when two males (one in his late teens, the other in his late twenties) accosted me for information, introducing themselves as college fraternity members ostensibly on a mission to have the culprit behind the recent attack of one of their brothers identified by people who were passing by the area where the alleged incident happened. Can you say “modus operandi”? Before they even got the chance to steal my money and my phone and my copies of Looking for Alaska and The Catcher in the Rye (I have the latter with me at all times), I said, “Sorry. I can’t be much help, I’m afraid. I have to meet someone in less than an hour and I still have to eat,” walked out, and jumped into the backseat of a passing taxi.

About six hours later, I came home with a bunch of books from three different Fully Booked branches, each with its own 80%-off bargain table. Christopher Isherwood’s The Berlin Stories and Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop are among TIME’s All-Time 100 Novels, so I had to get them. Charles Baxter’s The Feast of Love and Christopher Priest’s The Prestige are both well-designed movie tie-ins, so I also had to get them. Finally, I already had a copy of Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt, but I just couldn’t resist a heavily discounted Vintage Classics edition of the book, or of any novel, for that matter, so I also had to get it. All in all, my bibliomaniacal spree set me back by just under P500. But had my recent acquisitions not been on sale, I would have had to pay well over P2000. Which was just as well, I guess.

Better I get held up by bookstores than by shady pseudo-fraternity douchebags, I always say.

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  1. sashawantsmore said: Enjoy Baxter. Of all his novels, this is what I like best. I read it years and years and years ago, though. [Dammit, where is my copy?]
  2. zombienovela said: mga putang iyon
  3. aldrin posted this

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