Sunday, May 15, 2011

2011 Librex Book Fair

We've been lucky to have good weather this weekend so we managed to visit Librex book fair on Saturday and not the last day when most stands were already closing like it happened the last year.

It was so sunny outside that when we stepped into the entrance hall I felt like I had suddenly gone blind. Luckily there was a bit more light in the main room and the visiting experience wasn't completely ruined once our eyes adjusted to it. Note to self: next time bring sunglasses!

As a general impression I have to say there was a decent amount of visitors without being crowded, though. People were checking out books and even buying some. I haven't seen people carrying around big bags with books, not even in the street when going to or leaving the fair. Money must be tight for everyone.

If I remember correctly, the locations of the stands were the same as last year. I recognized RAO's suffocating and small enclosure. They didn't even had price tags on the books, which added to my old miff with them, so we had enough and didn't buy anything there just to make a point.

Nemira looked decent enough. The guy supervising the stand was bragging about how many books he'd sold. Not surprised since they offered a 2+1 discount, but the cheapest books were in poor condition. I prefer to buy books that don't look like 5-10 years old already, thank you very much. The new books announced on their site where no where in sight, I guess they save them for Bookfest (boo-hoo!), so moving on.

We scored a big hit at Corint. The lady remembered us from the last year when we had bought a big pile of books so she gave us one for free. I should bring little brother along more often. For the life of me I will never understand how can book 4 of a series cost twice as much as the entire series, but whatever. Some of the books I was looking for were missing here too.

Unfortunately Millennium Books didn't attend the fair. I was disappointed because I had hoped to finally get my hands on "Steampunk: The Second Revolution", since I haven't been able to find it anywhere else in town. I'm starting to wonder if they even know we exist on the map.

Oh, and one more thing: we grabbed a handful of cool bookmarks on the way out. Mission accomplished.

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