Fully Booked to open its First Mindanao branch in Gensan

Full Booked finally ventures into the shores of Mindanao by putting up its first branch in the island. With the opening of Fully Booked-Gensan in KCC Mall tentatively set in June or July this year, local bookworms are already salivating and furiously saving up. 

With 11 branches (10 in Metro Manila and 1 in Cebu City), Fully Booked-Gensan promises a novel experience for local readers. Occupying the 300-square-meter frontage of KCC Mall, the reading public will be treated to shelves and shelves of books ranging from the latest bestsellers to graphic novels, CDs,  stationery and collectible items. For those who are not contented with looking at the front and back covers of books, browsing and reading are allowed inside the store. Strategically placed couches and seats will be made available to readers.

The presence of Fully Booked will surely change the reading habits of people in the SoCCSKSarGen area by making sure that shopping for books and other items in their store will be a pleasurable experience.

Fully Booked augments the present bookstores in Gensan: Crown Bookstore, Kristan Bookstore, Roxas Crown Bookstore, Philippine Christian Bookstore, Expressions, Booksale, Rex Bookstore and the two branches of National Book Store.

So let's give a big WELCOME to Fully Booked-Gensan when it opens its doors for us in June or July!

The biggest Fully Booked branch in Bonifacio Global City, Metro Manila.

Please read this link for its scoop on Fully Booked-Gensan: Click here

Eating books, reading food (Reprint)

Eating books, reading food
By Jessica Zafra Updated September 14, 2008 12:00 AM

Like many single urbanites, I reside in an apartment that is too small to contain my life. Therefore I live at the mall. As far as I’m concerned, the mall is an extension of my house. In other words I am a mallcat. (I do not like the other term. Why would I refer to myself as vermin that carries pestilence? Not to mention that I love cats.)

Naturally I want my house to be a well-designed combination of the utilitarian and the aesthetic — comfortable, elegant, and spacious. It has to be a place where I can have business meetings with serious people, and then loaf with my friends. It has to have nice, clean bathrooms, because I don’t want to torture myself. Bonus points if there are trees and growing things on the premises to assure me that even if I am inside a complex of steel, concrete, and glass, I am surrounded by nature. Don’t forget that the place must offer great views for people-watching. I like to think of myself as a professional student of human nature.

The mall I live in has to meet nearly all the requirements of my daily life — groceries, cat supplies, movies, music, clothes and accessories, laundry, banking and bill-paying, computers, electronics and toys, repairs and alterations, and a lot of other things that don’t occur to me right now, but which should be there and ready when I need them.

Then there are my two absolute musts: Books and food, in that order.

My mall must have large bookstores well-stocked with both new titles and classics, bestsellers and more esoteric fare. Being an extension of my house, it must have restaurants that can function as my kitchen and dining room. Sure, I like trying out whatever fine dining establishments the foodies are raving about at the moment, but what I really need are homey, dependable restaurants where I can eat every single day without expiring from boredom or bankrupting myself.

Because they meet these and other, slightly stranger requirements, the Ayala Malls have been my default address for the last decade (Longer, if you consider that I’ve been going to the Ayala Malls since early childhood). Every time I run into people I know at the mall, they inevitably joke, “I always see you here, is this where you live?” When I say “Yes,” they think I’m kidding.

My typical day at the mall goes like this. I attend to the most pressing chores — ATM, laundry, whatever — and then I have lunch. In Greenbelt 3 I usually eat at Cafe Bola, which serves my favorite comfort food. I don’t even have to consult the menu, I know everything on it; the specials and new offerings are on the blackboard. There’s rice with fried dilis and mongo, laing on rice or pasta, fried lechong paksiw, sinampalukang manok, and lamb caldereta. There’s the cheese pimiento sandwich, and the Spam and egg on pan de sal.

Alternatively, I go to the dependable Chinese restaurant Ling Nam at Greenbelt 1 for their very good fried chicken, fish fillet with ampalaya, or siopao. Via Mare, which has branches in Greenbelt 1 and 3, serves an excellent lugaw with toppings, dinuguan at puto, and bibingka. Sentro in Greenbelt 3 is rightly famous for its corned beef sinigang, but I usually have the galunggong and the ampalaya.

Yes, I can have these dishes at home, but that is exactly the point: the mall is my home.

After lunch I head to Powerbooks in Greenbelt 3 to see what new books have arrived. In the ’70s and ’80s, you had to rely on friends and relatives abroad to send you the latest titles, or buy them on your trips. If you saw a book you wanted on a store shelf, you had to grab it immediately, or someone else would buy it and it would vanish forever. In the mid-’90s, with the opening of Powerbooks, our reading choices increased dramatically. Best of all, books are cheaper at Powerbooks and its parent company, National Book Store, than practically anywhere else on earth. Look at the retail price in American dollars or British pounds at the back of a book, then convert it into pesos using the day’s rate. I can assure you that the National Book Store/Powerbooks price is lower than that. And if you go during the sales, it’s literary geek heaven. By the way, National Book Store and Powerbooks carry all my books. Support your local author.

Afterwards, I take my book to Sala Bistro at Greenbelt 3 and read it over coffee and home-made honeycomb ice cream, or the spectacular strawberry meringue sundae. The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf next door can be depended on for double espressos, chai tea lattes, and a selection of pastries. If I’m with friends, we repair to Travel Cafe in Greenbelt 5 and share their giant halo-halo, which takes four or five people to finish.

When I’m in Bonifacio High Street, I usually spend a couple of hours lurking among the shelves at Fully Booked. Five floors of books, graphic novels, CDs and DVDs — when the bookstore first opened, I would start hyperventilating at the Fiction section. These days my favorite spot is the Biography section, which has big armchairs so you can browse in comfort. If you spot me while I’m looking for an armchair and you happen to be sitting in one, please get up. After hours of examining books I need a sugar fix, so I go to the Starbucks on the third floor for a bagel and latte. Or I walk down the street to Krispy Kreme, where often I don’t even have to buy a doughnut because they give them away.

At Serendra across the street is A Different Bookstore, a bookshop with a quirkier, more sophisticated selection. You know how you sometimes wish you could discuss books with the people who sell them? This is the place. Six years ago, long before anyone had ever heard of it, I bought my copy of Atonement by Ian McEwan at A Different Bookstore in Glorietta. I’m still gloating about my purchase. Having fed your mind, you can pop over to Mary Grace for apple pie and hot chocolate.

By now you will have reached the conclusion that I spend too much time at the mall. You would be right, but I must point out that this time is used productively — on chores, books, and food. I should add that I get bored easily, but there’s always something new at the Ayala Malls to keep me occupied. That is why I live there.

Booklust

There are times when my bookhaunts in local secondhand bookshops would come up with very slim pickings. When this happens, I turn to Ebay.ph to satisfy my booklust. However, the desire to smell the aroma of brand new book still overwhelms me. And so I travel to Davao City (6 hours round trip by bus) to trawl the selections at two branches of National Book Store.

When the net I cast does not come up with the books on my wishlist, I try to look for them online direct from the sites maintained by NBS, Fully Booked, Powerbooks, Booksale, Anvil. Suffice it to say that these sites are not friendly (NBS used to offer online orders with payment and pick-up done at a branch near you, now it requires you to have a Globe simcard to send Gcash!, Others require credit card charges - what's wrong with depositing cash payment to their bank accounts? Others don't ship orders at all. Sigh!) I ordered online from Anvil last year and tried again early this year, until now, no reply. Nada! Emboldened by a feature on A Different Bookstore in Globe's entrepreurship magazine, I emailed the lady owner about how I can order books from their store. That was last month and I still have to get a reply from her. Sigh!!!

Now this brings me to my experience with ordering online two types of publications: Story Philippines and Philippine Genre Stories. A friend, Dom Cimafranca, alerted me to the MExpress site where I could order them. Wow! Two birds in one shot! And so I registered and ordered several issues. To complete the transaction, I was instructed to make the payment to the nearest LBC branch using the order code and tracking issued to me, after which my order would be shipped through LBC too.

With hard-earned cash on hand, I went to the nearest of three LBC branches only to be told they were too busy accepting pera padala and cargoes and so may-I-please-go-to-any-of-their-two-mall-branches. At the first mall branch, I told the crew that I need to make an MExpress payment for my online order and showed them the order code and tracking. After glancing at the code and tracking, they gave me a strange look and said: Sir, please go to our branch at the second mall, we don't know anything about this.

Flaring up, I told them I felt like a ball being tossed from one branch to another. I also felt like a buyer trying to convince a fruit vendor s/he is selling mangoes of which s/he's not aware of. And so they made a phone call and were promptly told that indeed LBC accepts such a payment. Giving me a sheepish and apologetic look, the cashier accepted my payment.

A simple memo from LBC management would have alerted their employees of new services offered. And to think, LBC is supposed to accept payments for online orders for picture-printing, Gardenia bread, etc.!

I made a call to MExpress about my LBC experience and I have informed Kenneth Yu, the publisher of Philippine Genre Stories about it. Both told me they would relay my feedback to LBC.

Now I have several issues of Story Philippines and Philippine Genre Stories containing excellent stories to tide me over the Holy Week.

what the heck?!?

Do you have dictionaries for sale here?

This is the common question I hear being asked of salesclerks during my book hunts/haunts in used book shops.

I first heard this question on board MV Logos, sister ship of MV Doulos, when it docked in Makar Wharf in Gensan in the late 80s. Unlike MV Doulos, MV Logos had a greater variety of books for sale. I had a grand time piling up hardbound business books (at P100 per) on my aching arms. Not to mention sweating like a pig! (the ship was swarming with people of all ages and sizes).

It was only after I heard the same question being asked over and over again that I took time to examine it.

>Who is asking?

- mothers with elementary kids in tow. Good start! parents who want to provide their kids with a basic tool to learn English.
- high school teeners. A bit late! But never late than never.
- college students. Waaaaay too late! They're like old people asking if there's an available copy of Norman Vincent Peale's How to Win Friends & Influence People.

Having a dictionary/ies at home is a must. I'll be very happy to see a Filipino home with at least two dictionaries (English & Filipino) on prominent display than sets upon of encyclopedia untouched/unbrowsed on carved wooden cabinets.

>Where is it asked?

While a handful of used book shops carry secondhand dictionaries and thesauri, these come in trickles and are usually sold within a week. I can understand people wanting to buy used copies of bestsellers of years past, but people wanting to buy used dictionaries? Jeeze!

Used and old dictionaries, like old sets of encyclopedia, contain old words and information. A living language is dynamic and words change meaning as the world progresses. You only need to see how gay changed meaning from happy to queer. Not to mention salvage, among other words.

When I visit National Bookstore or Goodwill Bookstore, I make it a point to browse through the self containing dictionaries to update my collection. With P200, one can buy a good updated English dictionary. Filipino dictionaries are a different story though. The newest ones are priced beyond an ordinary Filipino's pocketbook. Even the newsprint editions are more than P500 each. The cheap ones are usually thin editions which hardly contain the burgeoning words that has been added to Filipino.

The ultimate dream English dictionary of any bookworm is the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), a 20-volume definitive collection. If and when I retire, i intend to spend part of my retirement pay on buying this set. I can already see myself on a rocking chair reading it from volume 1 . . . or may be I'll buy the cd-rom version and read it volume by volume on my laptop!

knowrish (know/cherish) part 2

As a pupil of Dadiangas Philippine Chinese School (now Junior Cultural Academy), i discovered the library at the faculty room. The books were all contained in one medium sized cabinet! I was able to borrow and read the books in it in one year (because we were allowed to borrow only one book at a time). But i discovered at Grade Five that a Grade Six pupil was a fellow bookworm. So from her I was able to borrow the Wizard of Oz book series and others (Enid Blyton & Bobbsey Twins).

We were lucky to have the Philippine Readers series written by Camilo Osias and illustrated by Fernando Amorsolo for our English classes from Grades 1 to 6. The series contained an exciting mix of myths, legends, classics, prose and poetry. The poem Abou Ben Adhem by James Leigh Hunt stands out in my memory because of the line may his tribe increase! In Filipino class, we had our fill of Mga Kuwentong Griyego (Greek Myths) and were further entranced by Edith Hamilton's Greek Mythology in high school.

Aunt Evelyn initiated me to book hunts/haunts. She would bring me to Pauline's which sold magazines and occasional books. She once gifted me an issue of Jack and Jill magazine and boy! did she ever regret that. The magazine was ideal reading for young bookworms like me. It had stories galore and colorful illustrations, but what kept me occupied was the centerfold. It was a cutout-pop up project of castles, seascapes, underwater scenes. So with scissors in hand and glue in another, i would proceed to cut and paste portions that should be joined. The finished product I would further paste in a clean coupon bond creased in half and then I would request the labandera (washerwoman) to iron it for me. After that first issue, i was hooked on Jack and Jill and would pester Aunt Evelyn to buy me the monthly issue on display. Eventually she would go by herself to Pauline's on the sly. When I get a place in the periodical top ten in class, i would ask my parents to buy me an issue of Jack and Jill as a reward.

When Aunt Evelyn pursued her education degree at Notre Dame University in Cotabato City, she would bring me along during the summer session for a brief vacation there. And again we would hunt/haunt the few bookstores there. While there, she would have a coterie of college boys escorting her and the official chaperon (me!). I would eavesdrop while she discussed books with her coed friends and male admirers. Her book choices veered towards the Catholic church-approved ones like those written by Archbishop Fulton Sheen. I remember asking her innocently what Sheen's book It Takes Three to Get Married when only the groom and bride do so (at my age love triangles and orgies were still far from my pristine mind.) She said the priest that officiates the wedding represents Christ as the third person in it. Every summer, she would bring home the books she was able to buy during the school year. These books would be kept in the glass covered bookcase in Lola's house. The top shelf would be locked and and the books like Sheen's were off-limits to me because of their adult content. The second shelf contained Thomas Hughes' Tom Brown's School Days and other "safe for kids" books. The lower two shelves was stacked with Reader's Digests and other magazines. I would spend many a summer afternoon reading on a sofa. Lola or one of my aunts would find me asleep on it during siesta hour clutching a book or magazine to my chest.

On my own, I started my book hunt/haunt in Dadiangas (old municipal name of Gensan). Aside from Pauline's, there were a handful of bookstores cum school and office supplies stores. There was one next to the Talion building in Magsaysay Avenue which sold religious books and other novelty items. Uncharacteristically, i was more drawn to the novelty items. Once I asked money from Lola, Mama, aunts and uncles so i could buy the small carton cylinder on a string which made bird sounds when twirled overhead.

In high school, there was Crown Bookstore owned by the Napalas and City Bookstore. I would scrimped my weekly allowance so I could buy books I'd like to read. The very first book I bought was the science fiction Those Who Watch by Robert Silverberg (book cover shown in this page). It was about three aliens who came to earth and assumed the features of an old man, a young man and a pretty woman.

A resident alien and Ram's Bombay Bazar owner, Mr. Jethanand Balani, once showed me his collection of books on India, Gandhi and others. Unfortunately, these were written in Hindi. I remember visiting classmates' homes and seeing their 30+ volume encyclopedia sets displayed prominently in their living rooms. In the 70s, encyclopedias seemed to be the status symbol of the local middle class. I would needle my classmates why they had to copy homework from me when they had encyclopedias within their reach while I had to do research in the high school library. They would answer back that their mothers never allowed them to handle the volumes for fear that these might fall apart and get torn. An encyclopedia salesman almost closed a deal with my parents. At only P300 a month, they could get the whole set plus bonus sets of science volumes, etc. But they balked at the last minute. Later as a teacher, when I was able to buy a desktop computer set, the first cd-roms I bought were the Encarta and Britannica encyclopedia.

In college, I widened my book hunt/haunt to Davao City where Notre Dame of Dadiangas College had its school publication, The Vox, printed. As its editor in chief in second year college, I went through scrutiny by the Media Board based in Davao City. It was the Martial Law way of censoring college school papers and each article went through a fine-toothed comb by its director, Gil Abarico. The Vox, to my recollection, was the only college school paper in Gensan allowed for publication in 1973-74. While there, Deciderius Erasmus' "When I get a little money, I buy books. And if there is any left over, I buy food" became my guiding principle and with it, I was able to buy my first hardcover book Roots by Alex Haley. While it is fiction, Haley's epic novel drove home to me how slavery changed the course of the lives and history of black people. It shamed me because before reading Roots, everything I knew about blacks were based on s/explotation books written by Kyle Onstott and Lance Horner.