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My Payless Haul.

I went on Saturday. Woke up late - was very tired that day - and ended up going there around 3pm. It rained half-way there. And heavily too. Visibly was very low and I could barely see the bonnet, what more the cars in front of me. We managed to reach YMCA hall safely, was even lucky enough to get a parking space in that heavy rain. And yet, we couldn't get out of the car to walk to the hall. Not because we didn't have an umbrella, but because the car park was flooded with water rising 2 inches high! So we stayed in the car for a while, listening to the Dixie Chicks singing "I Hope", waiting for the rain to stop.

I didn't want us to wade through the water. My shoes would've survived, of course, but my gf's shoes wouldn't have. And I couldn't drive back out and send her to the hall first for fear of losing my parking space. So in the end, I managed to reverse the car a bit to where the ground was a little higher and wasn't flooded, let my gf out, then parked my car back in. Phew! And all this for books!

Allow me to introduce the books I bought at the Payless Clearance Sale:
  1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Just realised the book's missing the first 18 pages. Gragh!)
  2. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (Apparently a 1962 edition.)
  3. The Sportswriter by Richard Ford (but Leon got Independence Day...)
  4. Granta 29 - New World (Didn't browse through it during the sale, but when I brought it home was overjoyed with the pics of Kowloon and the story of how Paul Theroux came to write The Great Railway Bazaar.)
  5. Navigating the Darwin Straits by Edith Forbes (I liked the cover...)
  6. Where the Road Bottoms Out by Victoria Redel (Ditto.)
  7. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver (Adventures in a '55 Volkswagen?! Count me in!)
  8. Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver (Since I got The Bean Trees...)
  9. The History of Luminous Motion by Scott Bradfield (The first page sold me.)
  10. The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs (I'm in love with the idea of urban planning.)
  11. Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana Jr. (Read the Classics Illustrated version a loooooong time ago. Probably time for me to read the real deal.)
  12. Bailey's Cafe by Gloria Naylor (First page sold me.)
  13. The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories by Sarah Orne Jewett (I lurrrrve Modern Library Classics. The books are sooo loveable, you just wanna hug 'em and treat them out to lunch. Or something.)
  14. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje (Er. I watched the movie?)
  15. Tours of the Black Clock by Steve Erickson (A man attempts to revive Hitler's lost dream! Gasp!)
  16. Microserfs by Douglas Coupland (Someone left his reading list for Biz Lit 101 from 1998 in this book.)
  17. Further Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin (It's not a Payless sale if I don't get at least one book from the Tales of the City series. Three down, three more to go.

Comments

  1. I thought I won't be able to go to Payless....hubby not willing to drive to YMCA but kind enough to take me for lunch at Mid Valley where I later met Xeus and Lydia ( and of course you and your gf, nice meeting you...finally!).

    Boy, was I really delighted when Xeus drove us to Payless and (sigh) though the haul wasn't as good as the last sale I went, I managed to get:

    Bill Byrson's "The African Diary" ( I used to fly to Johannesberg and love to know more about the Afrikans. It's a beautiful country with its own socio-political intricacies.)

    Jan Morris: The Journey ( ah, another travelogue type, a collection of his travel).

    Hillary Clinton: It takes a Village ( this one must get laa, only rm5)

    Three more other books where I bought because of the covers!!!Hehehehe....call me shallow but I do judge a book by the cover, first the cover to grab my attention ( besides newspaper reviews) and then I will peruse the inside.)
    The three books are all light reading, about women's mood swing.

    Thanks Xeus and Lydia for the company.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It was nice meeting you too, Yvonne!

    That's quite a good haul you got there. Lucky of you to get the Bryson, that certainly wasn't there on Saturday!

    Haha... I buy books because of their covers all the time!

    Will blog about Xeus's event later in the day. A little busy today.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks, Sharon! But I'm still hitting my head over not noticing the damaged copy the Great Gatsby...

    ReplyDelete
  4. I think i saw you. Actually Natasya (Natasya In The Sky) the one who pointed it out.

    But again, takut salah orang...hehe...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hoho! Yeah, I have that "could-be-someone-else" face... helps me blend in with my natural surroundings (books).

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ted, nice meeting you! I love the Great Gatsby. If you like I could photostat the missing pages and send them to you. I know it won't be the same as having an undamaged complete book but at least you'll get to read the story in its entirety (till you find another cheap copy at Payless later.)

    ReplyDelete
  7. It was nice meeting you too, Lydia!

    Thanks for the offer - I really appreciate it... but no need lah. Got lots of other books am planning to read first, so knowing what happens in the first 18 pages of the Great Gatsby isn't really a high-priority. (Especially so because the book I bought yesterday after Xeus's talk grabbed me by surprise and now I'm hooked! This is a recommendation: Go buy Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale!)

    Anyway, now I'm planning to keep that copy of the Great Gatsby in my car for emergency self-defence situations. You never know when you need a good paperback as a deterrent against shifty individuals. Of course, hardcovers of recent Harry Potter novels do a much better trick, but my copies have so come complete with their first 18 pages, so are unlikely to be used in self-defence...

    ...wow, that got non-sequitur real quick.

    ReplyDelete
  8. That's a good one. But the Gatsby is a thin volume, no good for self defense even in hard cover. It's more suitable for impressing chicks in the next car when you're caught in a traffic jam. Oh wait, better scrap that before your gf comes after me. But I doubt she will, she looks so sweet and demure.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Haha... she says she won't be so demure towards me if I ever attempt a stunt like that!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Wow how much did that all cost ?

    ReplyDelete
  11. *consults receipt*
    RM64.07

    ReplyDelete

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