Gotta Stop Buying For Now

I went to my aunts house at Bandar Utama for a visit yesterday as I didn't have to teach at the weekend. It has been a long time since I've seen her and my cousins. It was really nice hanging out with them.  Something I longed to do and which I didn't have much chance to.


My aunt went to the Popular Book fair on at IKANO yesterday afternoon so she shared with us the deals they were having there and what she had bought. 

That did it.


I had planned to temporarily stop entering any bookstore after my last purchase of 7 books.  Let's just say the forte has just crumbled.

We (my folks included) didn't have dinner at my aunts. There was another aunts place in Bangsar we needed to visit so we headed off to the book fair first.

I had thought that by limiting my time at the book fair I won't be sweeping any books up.  How entirely naive I was.  The minute I passed the literature/fiction pile, they were like Baskin Robbins' scrumptious selections all laid out pretty and inviting making them extremely irresistible.

Kazuo Ishiguro, Tony Parson, Bill Bryson, Nicholas Sparks, Nora Roberts (among the most sought after books) were all sprouting out of their pile as if trying to reach my hands.  Then something magnetically drew my attention. The Calligrapher's Daughter by Eugenia Kim. I've always been interested in anything Korean. Yes. Even Korean writes. That was the first book I carried in my hands.  I browsed around another shelf and saw Aryan Hirsi Ali's Infidel: My Life! Gotta have it. Grabbed it into my arms.  I was tempted to sweep up other books as well... The Great Wall, Terracotta Soldiers, Genghis Khan, The Chinese Cinderella, Catch 22, The Catcher in the Rye.  Instead I held my hands close to my chest in a dire effort to control my urges.

One last book, I thought to myself.

That means I really had to choose one that interests me the most. My fingers traced covers to covers and finally stopped at Teacher Man by Frank McCourt. It's a non fiction. But I got it anyway just cause the title relates to my part time job. (Turns out the writer's a Pulitzer Prize winner. Must be good - haha)

So within an hour I spent there I splurged on three books for myself in total while my mom got two cookery books herself.

Come to think of it, I've just added seven books to my reading list in just 3 days! And I've already got a long list going not even mentioning the ones arriving from Bookcrossing!

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Bookaholic? How we succumb to being one..

The budget bookstore I go to

I 'beh tahan' (couldn't contain myself) yesterday so I made a trip to the Bookxcess Bookstore at Amcorp Mall in PJ on my way home from work.

My initial plan was to collect my membership card (which i should have done so more than a month ago), pick up a book at the bargain corner and zoom out of there before I succumb to the wraths of bookdom.

Soonest I stepped into the bookstore I headed directly to the offer section. Spotted two books; The Lost Labyrinth and The Geneva Deception. They were on sale at an unbelievably low price.  Who wouldn't pick them up??  Well, two books wouldn't hurt.  They're so cheap!, I quipped myself.  Up they went into my arms.

Now, instead of heading toward the service counter to get my membership card next, my feet weren't listening to me.  They somehow seemed to have gotten possessed and turned left toward the skyscrapers of fictions, literatures and mysteries. Luckily nothing captured my attention there. But as I turned around, there was a whole range of interesting literatures staring into my face! Shit. Ok, I thought to myself. I'll just screen through.  Wrong move.

Tash Aw's The Harmony Silk Factory, Kunal Basu's The Opium Clerk, Chimamanda's Purple Hibiscus among a few others protruded from the shelf looking like candy popsicles.  Irresistable!

I thought I'd heard my cousin mentioned some of the titles on the shelf so I called her up - she's in China - and, well, tried to tease her with these temptations.  I ended up getting two books for my cousin and swept two more into my arms.

I entered the bookstore with two intentions - to collect my membership card and pick one bargain book.  I ended up with six books.  Two for my cousin and four books I got for myself!

How's this for a bookaholic?