In the past couple of weeks, I bought a dozen "new" books and maybe half a dozen or so magazines. By new, I mean stuff I haven't read yet, it's because my favorite place to buy books is BOOKSALE, a store that sells previously-owned books and magazines. There are actually several other such stores in the Philippines (Books for Less, Buy the Book, Chapters and Pages,) but the ones with most branches, widest selections and cheaper prices would be Booksale, so I spent a lot of time there. Don't get me wrong, I also frequent the regular bookstores in the country, but I actually prefer the smaller, out-of-the-way, hole-in-the-wall bookshops that specialize in second-hand books (for one thing the choices aren't limited to the popular authors.)
Right now, I'm reading James Swain's book Deadman's Poker, part of his Tony Valentine/Grift Sense series, that after finishing Kelley Armstrong's Industrial Magic, which is part of her Women of the Otherworld series. I already have a few other books already in line to read after that, Technobabel from the Shadowrun line of books, Rachel Caine's Heat Stroke from the Weather Warden series and a few others, in fact in between chapters of the novels I'm currently reading, I'm sneaking in a few pages of George Carlin's When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? Now, it's been a few years since I could consistently read 2-3 books a week, but sometimes I managed to pull it off.
Of course, even if the price is low, it does add up, especially considering how many books I buy (also, I'm unemployed and with the economy in the state it is in, well...) Everytime I pick up a book, previously-owned (possibly by an owner who does not care much for theirs books as much as they should,) dog-eared, spines cracked, pages yellowish with years, and being priced for 80-90 pesos (when they should cost half that, if at all, still, a new book would probaly sell for three times that, so I'm grateful for the savings,) I'm also thinking if it's still a good bargain. Sometimes I put them back in their shelves, but usually I manage to find it in my heart (and money in my wallet) to buy them anyway. You see, I want Booksale (and all the other stores like it) to last for as long as it can, and if it means pumping in my money (as little as it is) in their tills, then that's what I'll do.
I remember the days when there were, I think six or seven Booksale stores in the University Belt Area, there's just two there now. Ditto with the ones in Cubao, only two remain when there were as many as four in the years past. Back in my Undergrad days, there were two such stores right beside my college, before I graduated both of them were gone. There were a few places where there was at least one such store in the area, but is gone now. When I went to Baguio several years back, with all its pretty places and tourist spots, I was happiest when I found a Booksale outlet in one its crowded marketplaces, Today, I wonder if it's still there, it seems more and more of them close their doors down as the years go by. I wish people would read more, and then maybe this trend would reverse itself.
