Big Bookshop Tempts Again

Oh dear.

I know that some of you had already pounced on this and I will too very soon. Despite no money. Despite overfilled bookshelves. Despite no time to read any more. A bargain is that hard to resist!

Cheapy Cheapy Books

Okay you stingy fellows out there who need a quick bibliofix at rock bottom prices, this is a great time to pick up a bargain.

Pay Less are having one of their amazing warehouse sales:

(Find a map to the place on this previous post.)

Big Bookshop in Atria has new stock piled high at low low prices. It's not so much a warehouse sale these days as an almost permanent fixture! I went on Sunday, bumped into Natasya (who took this less than flattering photo of me in my Sunday morning scruffiness) and Roy, and was happily passing you-might-enjoy-this-es to them. I didn't find the fiction too exciting, but was delighted to find a book I had on my wish list: The Rough Guide to Cult Fiction, and several others I haven't even had time to open yet.

Someone told me that BookXcess in Ampcorp Mall have moved to a larger shoplot, but I haven't been there to check it out.

The hypermarkets did piss me off the other day, but I'm glad that Tesco is selling remaindered Penguin Classics along with the frozen peas. Jordan wrote to tell me that he had picked up some great bargains at the Kajang store including James Joyce for RM6 which is a steal. (Loss leaders again??)

MPH has very generous discounts at the moment for their Merdeka Sale with up to 20% off selected titles and 15% off all books. (I just bought Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union in a beautiful hardback edition for for around RM55 after discount!)

And, dear bookshop people, I am always happy to pass on news of special offers to the readers of this blog, so why don't you drop me a line?

All of these sales I have heard about from friends, through rumours, or by going to the store. Not via email from the booksellers.

One Shouldn't ...

... but one does.

Books purchased yesterday at Big Bookshop warehouse sale (yes, another one) on at Atria, Damansara Jaya until 25th March. Incredible bargains on incredible books, many of them Penguin.

Bookxcess in Amcorp Mall, P.J. also has new stock in at low low prices.

Cheapo Cheapo Books

It can't be anything but good news when you come across a source of cheap copies of books you want to read.

I seldom go to Amcorp Mall, but went exploring on Friday and found several book rental shops, a branch of Pay Less and branch of Popular, and this ...

Some four years back Jaqueline Ng (pictured here with her husband) began selling imported magazines in Reissued for a fraction of the cost of current issues - most titles go for RM9.90, and it's possible to get magazines which are just a month or two old. It's a good place to stock up on reading material for specialist interests and some of the titles are not normally sold in Malaysia.

She has now started BookXcess in the adjacent lot, planning to bring in a plentitude of cheap books from the UK. She's using the same suppliers as Big Bookshop and plans to keep prices to the same level e.g. most fiction titles are going for under RM20. The difference is that you won't have to wait for a warehouse sale - the books will be this price year round. A new consignment will be here soon and she has promised to let me know when they arrive.

Meanwhile, if you are in Amcorp, do drop by and talk to Jacqueline about the kinds of books you'd like to see brought in and the kind of prices you'd be prepared to pay. The shop is located at Level 2-10. (And why not go browse when you drop by the Sunday flea market?)

Anyway I couldn't resist a few mags and bought Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones for RM19.90.

I also went off the the Times Warehouse sale. There were an awful lot of books there - as usual - but a lot I think were "recycled" from their previous sales and there was little fiction that I fancied.

I wasn't tempted go crazy, but found enough stuff to make me happy including Melvyn Bragg's 12 Books that Changed the World (which I had almost bought full price), Writing Poetry (in the Teach Yourself series but surprisingly useful), The Cat Owner's Manual (am a sucker for books on cats and this one made me laugh 'cos it's written in techie speak) An Instance of the Finger Post by Iain Pears (a novel highly recommended by friends some time back), and Shirley Lim's Joss and Gold (to fill a gap in my local reading).

Was a bit sad to see books getting bent and warped by the way they were arranged/ chucked on the tables. Even a remaindered book deserves respect.

And the biggest downside to the sale was the total hassle of trying to find a parking place where there were none at all to be had.

Not enough cheap books for you? The Big Bookshop warehouse sale is still on in Atria until the end of this month, though no new stock has been added. And MPH has a Bookfair and Stock Clearance Sale at its Subang Parade branch 17th-28th January, with discounts of up to 50%.

(Pic nicked from MPH website)

The Peril of Bookstores

Writing about books is dangerous. I come across them in bookshops and they feel so much like old friends I have to greet them. "Hey, it's you! Here at last! I blogged about you months ago and coveted you ... and now I have you in my hands. ... I simply must take you home with me at once."

But penury beckons. I was in Atria yesterday, (buying fish from Giant, but found myself upstairs in the Big Bookshops Warehouse Sale again for some reason) and manged to find cheap copies of The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan (a gap in my reading), The Ghost Writer by John Harwood (horror story!) and Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky which is on all the best books of 2006 lists.

Then I was in Bangsar Shopping Centre and my legs lead me to Times where I found Self-Made Man: My Year Disguised as a Man by Norah Vincent, The Ruby in Her Navel by Barry Unsworth, Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl and the graphic version of City of Glass by Paul Auster. (See what you guys have done to me - I've bought my first graphic novel!)

The Pessl and Unsworth books are very nice trade paperback editions, of the sort you have to buy those quickly or you end up with manky mass-market paperbacks with newsprint pages and a shelf-life of six months.

But I was honestly working very hard in BSC.

Well ... it might have looked to an outsider as if I was having my hair fiddled with by Felix and my toe nails adorned by Alice with a silly snowman picture, but actually I was tearing through The Brooklyn Follies. (Of which I say nothing more at the moment ... though to give you a clue about how I feel about it, I ended up buying extra copies as gifts.)

And yes, even in Times, book-browsing, it was work: I was checking out what to buy for British Council Library - especially the latest cookbooks. (Nigellas and Jamies.)

I also ended up selling a few books for the bookshop because I got chatting to other bookslovers! Sadly, no-one wants to give me commission.

I was also mouching around the Amazon site looking for a few gifts for my family in UK. My 14 year old nephew Alex is the hardest to buy for.

Not because I can't think what he might like.

I'm sure he'd love Recipes For Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook A Moveable Feast or Backyard Ballistics: Build Potato Cannons, Paper Match Rockets, Cincinnati Fire Kites, Tennis Ball Mortars and More Dynamite Devices.

But I don't think my sis would still love me if I bought them for him.

Big Bookshop Warehouse Sale

The amazingness of recent warehouse book sales ... flummoxes me.

As a bookaholic I love my book bargains, and in the past few months I've had happy experiences with MPH, Times, and Payless warehouse sales and come away from each of them with bags and bags of great books at knockdown prices and feeling a euphoric high. Nothing but nothing beats finding a bargain copy of a book you really want!

But I can't help wondering what happening. Are books from overseas being dumped on the Malaysian market? Is there such a phenomena as "book dumping"?

You can understand a chain like MPH needing the occasional warehouse sale, because it costs money to store stock that isn't moving. Shelf space costs. It's sell cheap or pulp the stock to make way for more.

But it seems that cheap and excellent books are pouring in from elsewhere. Times was apparently bringing in cut price books from Singapore. The books in the Payless warehouse sale were second-hand copies from America.

And now here's another warehouse sale which has an incredible selection of books. I learned about it from Sympozium and decided to stop by at Atria this morning, not expecting very much. I mean how high does The Big Bookshop rank on any booklovers list of favourites? (The shop itself is on the top floor of Atria, sells a range of stationery but is pretty uninspiring.)

I was totally gobsmacked by what I found and don't even dare to tell you what I spent. (Okay, we don't have to eat next week.) I took a photo of my haul to show you and there are many more besides.

These are some of the best finds:

I picked up hardback copies of books on the Booker shortlist: Coetzee's Slow Man and Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown. (Julian Barnes Arthur and George with its beautiful cloth cover is there for less than a quarter of what I paid a few months back!)

And if you are interested in learning about poetry or writing it - as Sympozium pointed out The Ode Less Travelled is a real treasure. (I bought both book and CDs).

I bought novels I've long wanted: highly acclaimed stuff like The Colour by Rose Tremain, Case Histories by Kate Atkinson, The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth, Sebastian Faulks Human Traces, Remembering Babylon by David Malouf which won the IMPAC Dublin prize in 1996. I also found copies of The Ballad of Desmond Kale by Roger McDonald heaped high: this novel won the Miles Franklin Award less than a month ago and I wrote an entry pondering why I hadn't seen it in the bookshops.

I found hardback copies of Peter Ackroyd's biographies of Shakespeare and Turner, and a biography of photographer Diane Arbus which I had long coveted. Also Chuck Palahniuk's collection of essays Non-Fiction, writing guru Julia Cameron's Letters to a Young Artist, and the note books of an Australian writer called Murray Bail.

Now then, where are these books coming from and why are they here? Why are such recent and important titles among them?

The Big Bookshop has stores in Singapore, so there is surely a south of the border connection there too, as there is with Times. But it can't be a coincidence that so many of the books are by Australian writers. (Peter Carey's novels are heaped high in Aussie editions, including My Life as a Fake which is set in Malaysia.)

I wonder what will happen to these books if they are unsold. (Don't pulp them!!!!)
I wonder what the fallout from the flood of cheap books will be. (Good fallout - obvious. Bad fallout, the effect on established bookshops.)

Meanwhile - hey, I'm in bookish heaven. And may visit Atria again since new stock will be coming in.

The sale ends on 31st July.