Surprise Saturday

I always find it depressing when the books I would like to read are not available here in the Philippines. This is what I hate about my country; there are lots of readers here but we have a dismal record when it comes to, how do I phrase it, updated book stocks. Finding books especially the popular ones and books that were published for some time already can really be a pain. Although you can order book from the bookstore and have them ship the book to the Philippines, the costs can be very staggering. And the LIBRARIES! You will not find a book published in  the last five years in any of the libraries here (okay, at least not on the libraries that I have gone to). If you think I'm exaggerating, try visiting some public libraries. Even the UP Main Library the library at UP-CAL is not updated (I'll not even talk about what is contained (or the lack thereof) at the Quezon City public library). You can certainly find lots of Classics there, but none of the likes of The Hunger Games, books more likely to be read by people. I was surprised that there were Harry Potter books there but they were in the Reserve section and can only be borrowed overnight. Why oh why?

So anyways, imagine the excitement I had when I found out that The Book Depository is now shipping FREE, yes you read it right, FREE SHIPPING WORLDWIDE--though not technically worldwide because sone countries are not included--but THE PHILIPPINES IS INCLUDED! Good-bye I read some blogs about Filipinos using the service and so far, all of them praised the efficiency of the service. It only takes ten to fifteen working days (or up to a month during the holidays) for the books to arrive and that is door-to-door delivery and not the lousy service of the Philippine Post Office (PhilPost). I will surely be checking out their free shipping service to see if it's really efficient. I even made an account on their web page and I'll be using that to buy a hardcover copy of City of Bones since it's cowhere to be found here *heehee*. So I think I'll now say goodbye to Special Orders from Fully Booked. I still haven't received a word or anything about my order of The Brothers Karamazov which I placed last January 4th and the semester's already finished. Thank you so much for not helping, Fully Booked. I'm really disappointed at this.

Now back to writing my five-page essay and studying for my final exams.

P.S. Shoot! I didn't notice that I set the Publish time to March 20th, a day late.

AV