A Day at the Book Fair

I love books! They're my weakness. So, when I found out that the 31st Manila International Book Fair, one of the longest running book fairs in Asia (I go every single year!) opened its doors yesterday, I just had to drag Mother (the only other person in our household that loves reading as much as I do) all the way to the SMX near Mall of Asia for it (that's a good hour and a half from our little home in the mountains!). And that hour an a half of hellish traffic we braved through was absoultely worth it! The moment I stepped into that hall, I was in book heaven! Now I know how the Little Boy feels inside a toy store!

Rows and rows and rows of books! We spent hours just browsing through all the booths selling kids' books, learning materials for children, piano sheets (for Broadway musicals, Disney movies and even Glee!), hard-to-find sci-fi & fantasy titles, cookbooks... I could go and on about the thousands of books and titles you can find there! It's a bookworm's heaven!

I ended up buying more books for the Little Boy and recipe books for the Mister. I got so excited over how cheap some of the cookbooks & kids' books were that I totally forgot to buy books for myself. I was looking for new Francesca Lia Block and new fantasy titles for my little library but I just didn't have time and the strength to carry any more bags of books by then (Mother and I were already sharing 4 heavy ecobags filled with books after just our first hour!).

Here's some of the stuff I ended up with:

First stop is always at Adarna.
Here's a giant book that'll teach the Little Boy how to tell time. 

more books from Adarna!
These are storybooks written in 2 languages: English & Tagalog,
beautifully illustrated by local artists, and only at P55 each!

recipe books & other coffee table books

vegetarian cookbooks for just P90 & P60!

a cute little recipe book for vegetable soups
that's actually it's own kitchen stand -- P145

we got these hardbound books on entertaining and
 gourmet hors d'oeuvres for only P200 each!
(You can actually still see the original prices on the back, each at around P1,500+)

the only things I got for myself -- glossies on travel & spa!

I'm pretty happy with my loot this year! Apart from the fact that I missed out on the fantasy books, I'm glad I was able to bring home new storybooks for the Little Boy's bedtime stories. :)

If there's one thing I do regret not buying (and I hate it when that happens!), it's this ecobag I saw in a Taiwanese booth selling health books (that were all in Taiwanese) and environment-friendly eating utensils. It was this denim-looking bag that had the words 'coexist with the earth' written across the front. When you look closely though, you'll see that it isn't actually denim. In fact, it's made of recycled PET bottles. Apparently, Taiwanese people are really gungho about collecting PET bottles and turning it into something new. Something the Philippines could definitely do, too, seeing as how many C2, Real Leaf, softdrinks bottles end up in our trash cans everyday! The bag was being sold for P600 and I hesitated because of the price. Looking back now, P600 wasn't bad! It actually looked pretty sturdy, too!

I'd go back if I could. Unfortunately, noone wants to brave the Manila traffic today and I'm leaving for Palawan tomorrow for a retreat. Besides, I think I'm already broke, I'm pretty sure I blew all of this year's book budget during just those few hours so I guess that was it for me at this year's Book Fair. Boo.

For all my fellow booklovers though, if you have time, do stop by the book fair this weekend! You still have four days to go! Admission fee's just P20. It's open from 10am to 8PM daily until Sunday the 19th at the SMX Convention Center right by Mall of Asia.

Have fun! :)