Book Sale

Wondering around aimlessly at Suntec… I just happened onto a books clearance going on at Carrefour. I’ll admit that I’ve not gone to many book fairs in my adult life… I do remember going as a kid, but these days it is way harder to drag my little pert butt to some far out part of Singapore.

It was really quite exciting, for lack of a better word, to see a bunch of books going for as little as $3 a book… that’s like tons cheaper than my rental costs at second hand book shops! Well, needless to say, I spent the remainder of my lunch ploughing through the stacks of books… okay, maybe not stacks, but a small messy mountain. It’s amazing how time passes every time I’m browsing through books, or when I’m sleeping for that matter, but lunch just disappeared. And I emerged with books ranging from authors / books that I’ve long wanted to try out (Richard North Patterson, Arthur & George, The Game), etc to existing favourites (Kathy Reichs). But with all the steals there was also the slight pang I felt when I came across copies of books like “The Orientalist” or Umberto Eco’s books… stuff that I paid at least $17 for but are now going for $3… *sighs* you win some, and you lose some. True, not all the books are in tip top condition, but they are definitely comparable to the well thumbed and weather ridden copy of Freakonomics that is currently residing in my bag. The poor book has endured being rained on, dripped on, dropped… Needless to say, it’s in a sorry state.

But I digress… my biggest consideration as I was browsing through the books was STORAGE. My shelves at home are packed to the brim, and I have since discovered that paper has a very ungainly habit of turning yellow, musty and sticky when left alone for too long. No matter how many times I have vowed to sandpaper my books… it has yet to materialize. Thus rental book stores… where I do not need to keep the books, and I have seemingly endless choice. Which reminds me, Jules has a colleague who just splurged $2,000 in books… I need to bug Jules to bring me over to visit just so that I can “wow” at the books… and no, it is most definitely not Mr. “J”, whom, I will concede, has an excellent taste in books.

So I started daydreaming… if I were to have a month off now… and nothing much to do but read, which would be the books on my shelf that I’ll cuddle up with in bed (especially in this rain). In no order or priority, I suppose it will be:

• The Wheel of Time – I need to read all the books again in order to even have an inkling of what has happened in preparation for Book Twelve (?)
• Agatha Christie – especially the books featuring Hercule Poirot. It’s been my long standing wish (ever since age 13?) to own every single book written by her… which I will contrive to achieve when I finally have my own house and plenty of bookshelf space. (Jules, you have been warned, although you will most probably never read this)
• Dante and Milton – I have tried reading this about a trillion times since “B” bought it for me four / five? years ago, but have since concluded that it’s impossible to read unless you have a whole day free.
• War and Peace – it’s an incredibly thick copy rendering it impossible to lug around. I once saw a very pretty set at Borders (they split it into 7 different books) and I was so tempted to purchase it… but it was priced at about $70
• Either the Arab / Israel stuff that I have or the British History stuff – these are books that I’ve picked up and hoarded over the years… all “projects” which I began, but never could complete… yup… discipline issue again. I am just so fickle when it comes to books.

For now, gotta tackle yet another ungamely and cumbersome template… and maybe, just maybe, I’ll pop over to Carrefour again for lunch tomorrow.