Paperbags, Oh Paperbags.

I was searching high and low, for cheap, functional paperbags. And oh boy was it a mission! My requirements for paperbags were; 1. brown 2. cheap 3. big enough for 3 or 4 paperback books 4. did i say cheap. I went to wholesale stores, Cowboy (this wondrous, anything-u-can-find-under-the-sun shop in my hometown Kuantan), Mydin, hardware shops, online, paperbag suppliers, just about everywhere!, to find a simple brown paperbag. What I did find; 1. small brown paperbags just enough to fit 3 goreng pisang 2. cheap but ugggly paperbags 3. nice but wayyy too pricey paperbags (come on, I sell pre-loved books and my margin is so tiny that I can only dream of using embossed paperbags, with double enforced bottom and paper twisted handles). Even the wondrous shop failed me.

So, after exhausting all my options, I finally stumbled upon a website selling the paperbag. Although I initially wanted it brown (I have this thing with anything brown and raw looking), I decided white is pretty too. As soon as they got in, I stamped them with BOOKSYbooks. and they're now ready to be used. I was so keen on finding paperbags because of my deep hatred towards anything plastic. Ok, that sounds a bit too heavy and sadistic. I really dislike plastic bags. That's why I tried so hard to find paper ones. And all my efforts did not go out in vain :) Now I can officially say NO to plastic bags!

Bhelf.com

If you love Booksybooks, I'm sure you'll love Bhelf.com. Bhelf is a website selling quality affordable second-hand books brought in straight from Australia. They carry a wide range of books from fiction to autobiographies, travels, collectibles and so on. The owner is a newly acquainted friend of mine and what we're doing is helping each other out. So, if there's any titles you're looking for and just cannot find here... Try Bhelf. Happy browsing ;)

Booksybooks Day Out.

Hey, we're back again with another market affair. For those who've been waiting for our next day out, Pekan Frinjan is where we'll be this month.


Booksybooks will be at the event selling your favourite pre-loved books :) The market starts at 3pm. Don't miss it yea..

Love,
Booksybooks.

Haiku

I bought this book last week and I find it hilarious! I had no idea what Haiku was when I picked up the book. But just a flip inside, it explains that 'In the 16th century, Zen monks in Japan developed Haiku, a poem consisting of three unrhymed lines of five, seven and five syllables'. This dear book has Haiku-ed 100 great books. If you've read or know of these 100 books, you'll find their Haiku versions really funny. Here's some of my favourites...

WUTHERING HEIGHTS
Emily Bronte
Wild. Strange. A bit damp.
Heathcliff waits for Cathy's ghost.
Women. Always late.

LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER
D.H. Lawrence
On the grounds, fresh game.
On the new gamekeeper, fresh
Lady Chatterley.

LOLITA
Vladimir Nabokov
Lecherous linguist -
he lays low and is laid low
after laying Lo.

LITTLE WOMEN
Louisa May Alcott
Snowdrops hang like tears
Shy, sweet, saintly Beth has died
One down, three to go.

Animal Farm by George Orwell

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Animal Farm is a novella by George Orwell, and is the most famous satirical allegory of Soviet totalitarianism. Published in 1945, the book reflects events leading up to and during the Stalin era. Orwell, a democratic socialist, and a member of the Independent Labour Party for many years, was a critic of Joseph Stalin, and was suspicious of Moscow-directed Stalinism after his experiences with the NKVD during the Spanish Civil War.

A Cannibal in Manhattan by Tama Janowitz

Category: Fiction
Type: Paperback
Condition: Small tear on back cover from price sticker
Price: RM10

Mgungu Yabba Mgungu is living happily on the South Sea island of New Burnt Norton with his three wives, one hundred pigs and assorted children, the last remaining members of the tribe of the Lesser Pimbas. Into this uncivilised land comes Maria Fishburn, strange and beautiful heiress, who decides to marry Mgungu and drag him back to New York City. From his first encounter with airline food and with rock star Kent Gable, who declares he was recently abducted by aliens, Mgungu is plunged into a world much more predatory than anything in the South Seas. Soon Mgungu is the toast of all Manhattan, meeting Parker Junius, unctuous curator of the Museum of Primitive Arts, talking philosophy with Sophie Tuckerman, deli owner, and meeting the illustrious Joey, of pizza parlour fame. It is swathed in a huge fur coat and with his new gold pen through his nose that Mgungu finally marries Maria. But then he falls in with a motley crew who come to threaten them both.

Travelling Light by Sarah Webb

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In this collection of fascinating, thought-provoking, poignant and funny true-life travel pieces, bestselling author Sarah Webb has gathered together some of Irelands top women writers. Martina Devlin tracks down the perfect amber necklace in St Petersburg; Julie Parsons makes an unforgettable trip as a child by sea to Ireland from New Zealand following her fathers sudden disappearance; Morag Prunty finds solace and solitude among the hammams of Marrakesh and Marian Keyes pens finds courage and hope in Ethiopia. Add in Louise Easts incredible story of nearly losing her life three times in one week in Colombia, and Clare Downlings encounter with a Don Johnson lookalike on a visit to Dublin, and this volume provides the perfect package for a delicious weekends reading. An anthology of writing about travel from Irelands leading women writers. Contributors include Martina Devlin, Claire Dowling, Marian Keyes, Julie Parsons, Morag Prunty. All royalties earned on this book go to the Kisiizi Childrens Hospital in Uganda.

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

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Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the town's fiercest racists, Lily decides they should both escape to Tiburon, South Carolina--a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. There they are taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters who introduce Lily to a mesmerizing world of bees, honey, and the Black Madonna who presides over their household. This is a remarkable story about divine female power and the transforming power of love--a story that women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

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"When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin." With this startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first sentence, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetlelike insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing -- though absurdly comic -- meditation on human feelings of inadequecy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction.

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

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In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter...

Ugly by Constance Briscoe

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'Lord, sweet Lord how come she so ugly. Ugly. Ugly.' These cruel words are just the beginning. Constance's mother systematically abused her daughter, both physically and emotionally, throughout her childhood. Regularly beaten and starved, the child was so desperate she took herself off to Social Services and tried to get taken into care. When Constance was thirteen, her mother simply moved out, leaving her daughter to fend for herself: there was no gas, no electricity and no food. But somehow Constance found the courage to survive her terrible start in life. This is her heartbreaking - and ultimate triumphant - story.

A Monk Swimming by Malachy McCourt

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Slapped with a libel suit after an appearance on a talk show,Malachy McCourt crows, "If they could only see me now in the slums of Limerick, a big shot, sued for a million. Bejesus, isn't America a great and wonderful country?" His older brother Frank's Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, Angela's Ashes, took its somber tone from the bleak atmosphere of those slums, while Malachy's boisterous recollections are fueled by his zestful appreciation for the opportunities and oddities of his native land. He and Frank were born in Brooklyn, moved with their parents to Ireland as children, then returned to the States as adults. This book covers the decade 1952-63, when Malachy roistered across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, but spent most of his time in New York City. There his ready wit and quick tongue won him an acting job with the Irish Players, a semiregular stint on the Tonight show hosted by Jack Paar, and friendships with some well-heeled, well-born types who shared his fondness for saloon life and bankrolled him in an East Side saloon that may have been the first singles bar. He chronicles those events--and many others--with back-slapping bonhomie. Although McCourt acknowledges the personal demons that pursued him from his poverty-stricken childhood and destroyed his first marriage, this is on the whole an exuberant autobiography that pays tribute to the joys of a freewheeling life.

Not Without My Daughter by Betty Mahmoody

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In August 1984, Michigan housewife Betty Mahmoody accompanied her husband to his native Iran for a two-week vacation. To her horror, she found herself and her four-year-old daughter, Mahtob, virtual prisoners of a man rededicated to his Shiite Moslem faith, in a land where women are near-slaves and Americans are despised. Their only hope for escape lay in a dangerous underground that would not take her child...

Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding

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Lurching from the cappuccino bars of Notting Hill to the blissed-out shores of Thailand, everyone's favorite Singleton Bridget Jones begins her search for The Truth in spite of pathetically unevolved men, insane dating theories, and Smug Married advice. She experiences a zeitgeist-esque Spiritual Epiphany somewhere between the pages of How to Find the Love You Want Without Seeking It (can self-help books really help self?), protective custody, and a lightly chilled Chardonnay.

Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

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Barcelona, 1945 - A great world city lies shrouded in secrets after the war, and a boy mourning the loss of his mother finds solace in his love for an extraordinary book called The Shadow of the Wind, by an author named Julián Carax. When the boy searches for Carax's other books, it begins to dawn on him, to his horror, that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book the man has ever written. Soon the boy realizes that The Shadow of the Wind is as dangerous to own as it is impossible to forget, for the mystery of its author's identity holds the key to an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love that someone will go to any lengths to keep secret.

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee

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At fifty--two Professor David Lurie is divorced, filled with desire but lacking passion. An affair with one of his students leaves him jobless and friendless, except for his daughter, Lucy, who works her smallholding with her neighbor, Petrus, an African farmer now on the way to a modest prosperity. David's attempts to relate to Lucy, and to a society with new racial complexities, are disrupted by an afternoon of violence that changes him and his daughter in ways he could never have foreseen.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

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A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan’s California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified “dinery server” on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation -- the narrators of Cloud Atlas hear each other’s echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small.

The Three Evangelists by Fred Vargas

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Sophia Simeonidis, a Greek opera singer, wakes up one morning to discover that a tree has appeared overnight in the garden of her Paris house. As her husband doesn’t give a damn, she asks her new neighbours to dig around the tree to find out if something has been buried. Her neighbours are eccentric: Vandoosler, an ex-cop fired from the police for having helped a murderer to escape, and sharing the house are three impecunious historians: Mathias, Marc and Lucien – the three evangelists, as Vandoosler calls them. They accept the job because they are desperate for money and rather curious. When they find nothing and Sophia’s dead body turns up weeks later, they decide to investigate.

Nature Girl by Carl Hiaasen

Category: Fiction
Type: Paperback
Condition: Good
Price: RM15

Honey Santana—impassioned, willful, possibly bipolar, self-proclaimed “queen of lost causes”—has a scheme to help rid the world of irresponsibility, indifference, and dinnertime sales calls. She’s taking rude, gullible Relentless, Inc., telemarketer Boyd Shreave and his less-than-enthusiastic mistress, Eugenie—the fifteen-minute-famous girlfriend of a tabloid murderer—into the wilderness of Florida’s Ten Thousand Islands for a gentle lesson in civility. What she doesn’t know is that she’s being followed by her Honey-obsessed former employer, Piejack (whose mismatched fingers are proof that sexual harassment in the workplace is a bad idea). And he doesn’t know he’s being followed by Honey’s still-smitten former drug-running ex-husband, Perry, and their wise-and-protective-way-beyond-his-years twelve-year-old-son, Fry. And when they all pull up on Dismal Key, they don’t know they’re intruding on Sammy Tigertail, a half white–half Seminole failed alligator wrestler, trying like hell to be a hermit despite the Florida State coed who’s dying to be his hostage . . .

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

Category: Fiction
Type: Paperback
Condition: Brown spots around the edges otherwise good
Price: RM15

A long-lost book reappears, mysteriously connecting an old man searching for his son and a girl seeking a cure for her widowed mother's loneliness.

Leo Gursky is just about surviving, tapping his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he's still alive. But life wasn't always like this: sixty years ago, in the Polish village where he was born, Leo fell in love and wrote a book. And though Leo doesn't know it, that book survived, inspiring fabulous circumstances, even love. Fourteen-year-old Alma was named after a character in that very book. And although she has her hands full—keeping track of her brother, Bird (who thinks he might be the Messiah), and taking copious notes on How to Survive in the Wild—she undertakes an adventure to find her namesake and save her family. With consummate, spellbinding skill, Nicole Krauss gradually draws together their stories.

Second Honeymoon by Joanna Trollope

Category: Fiction
Type: Paperback
Condition: Good
Price: RM15

Now that her third and last child has left the nest, Edie Boyd’s life turns suddenly and uncomfortably silent. She begins to yearn for the maternal intimacy that now seems lost to her forever. Be careful what you wish for…Before long, a mother-and-child reunion is in full swing: life away from the nest has proven to be unexpectedly daunting to the children, who one-by-one return home, bringing their troubles. With an unannounced new phase of parenthood suddenly stretching ahead of her, Edie finds her home more crowded than ever. In this touching, artful novel, Joanna Trollope has created a family drama for the ages, a moving story of work, love and eternal parenthood.

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

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When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American, is brought to Europe by her wealthy Aunt Touchett, it is expected that she will soon marry. But Isabel, resolved to determine her own fate, does not hesitate to turn down two eligible suitors. She then finds herself irresistibly drawn to Gilbert Osmond, who, beneath his veneer of charm and cultivation, is cruelty itself. A story of intense poignancy, Isabel's tale of love and betrayal still resonates with modern audiences.

Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Category: Fiction - Classic
Type: Paperback
Condition: Good
Price: RM15

It is 1642 in the Puritan town of Boston. Hester Prynne has been found guilty of adultery and has born an illegitimate child. In lieu of being put to death, she is condemned to wear the scarlet letter A on her dress as a reminder of her shameful act.

Hester's husband had been lost at sea years earlier and was presumed dead, but now reappears in time to witness Hester's humiliation on the town scaffold. Upon discovering her deed, the vengeful husband becomes obsessed with finding the identity of the man who dishonored his wife. To do so he assumes a false name, pretends to be a physician and forces Hester keep his new identity secret. Meanwhile Hester's lover, the beloved Reverend Dimmesdale, publicly pressures her to name the child's father, while secretly praying that she will not. Hester defiantly protects his identity and reputation, even while faced with losing her daughter, Pearl.

A Portrait of the Young Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

Category: Fiction - Classic
Type: Paperback
Condition: Good
Price: RM15

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man portrays Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, providing an oblique self-portrait of the young James Joyce. At its center are questions of origin and source, authority and authorship, and the relationship of an artist to his family, culture, and race. Exuberantly inventive, this coming-of-age story is a tour de force of style and technique.

Friends in High Places by Donna Leon

Category: Fiction
Type: Paperback
Condition: Good
Price:RM15

Venetian cop, Commissario Guido Brunetti, wonders whom he knows to bring pressure on a local government department, to investigate the lack of official building approval on his apartment. But when that same official phones him at work, clearly scared by some information he plans to give Brunetti, and is later found dead after a fall from scaffolding, something is clearly wrong, something with far greater implications than the fate of Guido's own apartment. Brunetti's investigations take him into the unfamiliar areas of Venetian life - drug abuse and loan sharking - while the deaths of two young drug addicts, and the arrest and release of a suspected drug dealer, reveal, once again, what a difference it makes in Venice to have 'Friends in High Places'.

We're Back!

Helloooo,

I'm back from my wonderful trip! So everything goes on as usual..
I have yet to plan another flea market stall for Booksybooks.
But nothing definite yet. Will surely keep you all posted :)

Truly,
Booksybooks.