Posts tagged as "photo" · The Polysyllabic Spree

Posts tagged as "photo"

The Polysyllabic Spree 20

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.

31 May 2010 · Comments · Permalink · http://aldr.in/647285435

The Polysyllabic Spree 42

Miguel Syjuco’s Ilustrado is all the rage lately. So are giveaways!

After buying The Dark Knight Returns, I thought I’d stay in the store for a little while longer last night and browse the non-graphic novel shelves. As a habitué of the store, I had practically memorized what books are in a particular aisle and can quickly spot the new arrivals therein—save for the shelves in the large-format section, which is home to books whose size and price more often than not keep me at bay. But for some reason I found myself taking a look at the books in said section last night and was surprised to see a copy of the Picador edition of Ilustrado (pictured right). The brilliant cover by Jon Gray, who also designed the cover of the smaller, cheaper, and more common Farrar, Straus and Giroux edition (left), a copy of which I had purchased several weeks back, caught me off guard. As much a collector of book covers as a collector of books, I bought it right there and then.

Now, I have two copies of the novel, and I’m giving one of them (the smaller and cheaper one) away. Similar to the tiny set of rules I specified for my first book giveaway half a year ago, all you have to do to win is to like, reblog, or reply to this post. Also, lest I risk ponying up a ridiculous amount of money for international shipping, you need to be a resident of the Republic of the Philippines to qualify. The winner will be determined via random draw on May 30, 2010.

So what are you waiting for? Hit that heart button or buzz in with your thoughts and be one step closer to being enlightened.

But wait! There’s more! If you want to earn an additionally entry for the draw, just photo reply to this post with your favorite book cover design. I expect to see more works by Jon Gray and maybe a little bit of Milan Bozic, Peter Mendelsuhn, David Pearson, and Chip Kidd, but I bet I’ll be delighted at your choices all the same.

Ilustrado, by the way, is Syjuco’s debut novel. He won the Man Asian Literary Prize and the Palanca Award in 2008 for the manuscript of Ilustrado. Syjuco was born in the Philippines and currently lives in Montreal. He is therefore ineligible to join this giveaway.

23 May 2010 · Comments · Permalink · http://aldr.in/624737402

The Polysyllabic Spree 19

Fully Booked, my favorite bookstore chain in the country, celebrated the annual Free Comic Book Day today by giving away (surprise, surprise) free comic books. More important, though, for this impulsive buyer of books, comic or otherwise, Fully Booked also put their stock of graphic novels on sale.

As was the case last year, I didn’t get to score free comics this year; the store I ran to this afternoon had run out of copies to give away hours before I showed up. But as was also the case last year, I nabbed a kick-ass graphic novel at 20% off this year. Last year I got Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s groundbreaking magnum opus, Watchmen. This year I bought Frank Miller’s masterful Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.

KA-POW!

22 May 2010 · Comments · Permalink · http://aldr.in/622015483

The Polysyllabic Spree 10

$Ten bookstores within a 500-meter radius of my center of gravity as I sit on my ergonomic chair in the office. Ten miniature meccas of literature within walking distance from my cubicle on the eight floor of the east tower of a commercial building. What kind of book collector wouldn’t be tempted to visit at least one of them, considering their proximity to his or her place of employment? Not my kind, that’s for sure. Near Ortigas Center (or “The OC,” if you’re so inclined), where I work, are a total of ten bookstores, including branches of the three major bookstore chains in the country, National Book Store, Fully Booked, and Powerbooks, and those of every frugal book hoarder’s best friend, Booksale, located at or inside three multilevel shopping malls along Edsa. If you’re (a) an avid reader, (b) an impulse purchaser, and (c) a daily commuter who has to cross Edsa en route for home, don’t make the perfect mistake of accepting a job in Ortigas Center or you’ll often return home from work with an empty wallet and a bag full of books. Take it from me. Tonight, buying David Shields’s Reality Hunger at NBS Bestsellers Robinsons Galleria, Ken Jennings’s Brainiac at Fully Booked Shangri-La, and J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (not in picture) from Booksale SM Megamall, I just did. Jorge Luis Borges famously said, “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” Passing by at least one book shop on my way home almost every day, invariably expecting to let go of a considerable fraction of what I earn in exchange of eight-hour workdays in an office in Ortigas Center, in my place of abode Paradise I have built.$

Ten bookstores within a 500-meter radius of my center of gravity as I sit on my ergonomic chair in the office. Ten miniature meccas of literature within walking distance from my cubicle on the eight floor of the east tower of a commercial building. What kind of book collector wouldn’t be tempted to visit at least one of them, considering their proximity to his or her place of employment? Not my kind, that’s for sure.

Near Ortigas Center (or “The OC,” if you’re so inclined), where I work, are a total of ten bookstores, including branches of the three major bookstore chains in the country, National Book Store, Fully Booked, and Powerbooks, and those of every frugal book hoarder’s best friend, Booksale, located at or inside three multilevel shopping malls along Edsa. If you’re (a) an avid reader, (b) an impulse purchaser, and (c) a daily commuter who has to cross Edsa en route for home, don’t make the perfect mistake of accepting a job in Ortigas Center or you’ll often return home from work with an empty wallet and a bag full of books. Take it from me. Tonight, buying David Shields’s Reality Hunger at NBS Bestsellers Robinsons Galleria, Ken Jennings’s Brainiac at Fully Booked Shangri-La, and J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (not in picture) from Booksale SM Megamall, I just did.

Jorge Luis Borges famously said, “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” Passing by at least one book shop on my way home almost every day, invariably expecting to let go of a considerable fraction of what I earn in exchange of eight-hour workdays in an office in Ortigas Center, in my place of abode Paradise I have built.

21 May 2010 · Comments · Permalink · http://aldr.in/616531268