Tag: book sale

I just recently bought ten books at an atrium sale, but that didn’t stop me from browsing the Junior Page atrium sale and buying these six.

• The King Arthur Trilogy by Rosemary Sutcliff
• How We Learn by Benedict Carey
• Screenwise by Devorah Heitner
• Head in the Cloud by William Poundstone
• Born Reading by Jason Boog
• Peak by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool

The cashier asked me how long it was going to take me to read them, as if either I had a superpower or was biting off more than I could chew. I think most of the people shopping the sale were only buying one, two, or three books at a time. Tough to make back the rental fees at that rate, I would think.

And yet in Square 2, the shopping mall next door, there was ANOTHER atrium book sale running at the same time.

I do not need more books, but I love looking through the random collection of not-quite-current titles whenever I see an atrium sale. The serendipity of it is what appeals. I can’t not buy discounted books on topics I find interesting!

I bought:

• How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell
• The Eighty-Minute MBA by Richard Reeves and John Knell
• Simplicity by Edward de Bono
• Neurotribes by Steve Silberman
• A Field Guide to Lies and Statistics by Daniel Levitin
• Happiness by Design by Paul Dolan
• Malaysa Singapore: Fifty Years of Contentions 1965 – 2015 by Kadir Mohamad
• Passage of Time: Singapore Bookstore Stories 1881 – 2016 by Chou Sing Chu Foundation
• 101 Books to Read Before You Grow Up by Bianca Schulze
• The Movie Book by DK

I bought 16 books at the annual NUS E-Resource Discovery Day Book Sale today. The paperbacks were SG$1 and the hardcovers were SG$2. There were eight or ten tables, including some Chinese books and Japanese manga.

The book I’m most excited about in this batch is the one about Singlish (top left), called New Englishes: The Case of Singapore, published by NUS Press in 1988.

The runner up is the vintage hardcover titled An Introduction to the Study of Education, published in the US in 1951. The binding, the weight of the paper and the oddly familiar, comforting typography make it a distinctly pleasing physical object regardless of whatever it happens to say.

• New Englishes, by Joseph Foley
• An Introduction to the Study of Education, by George Willard Frasier
• A Parent’s Guide to Children’s Reading, by Nancy Larrick
• Tell Me Why?, by Octopus Publishing Group
• Organization Development (6th Edition), by Wendell L. French and Cecil H. Bell, Jr.
• Talking with Kids, by Alison Mulvaney
• Megacreativity, by Andrei G. Aleinikov
• The Chinese, by David Bonavia
• The Pagemaster, by Jordan Horowitz
• Arthurian Romances, by Chretien de Troyes
• The Language Web, by Jean Aitchison
• Vocabulary: Description, Acquisition and Pedagogy, by Edited by Norbert Schmitt and Michael McCarthy
• Getting the Best from People, by Martha I. Finney
• Hiring the Best, by Cathy Fyock
• Syntax of Scientific English, by Lee Kok Cheong
• Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th Edition)

I bought the 20 books shown above and listed below for S$2 each at a sale hosted by the United Square branch of the Singapore bookstore chain Popular. Two Singapore dollars is a tough price to beat, even for used books in the US! These books were new but remaindered or noticeably shopworn in some cases.

I think the one I was most excited about finding was China in Ten Words, which was on my Amazon wishlist. If I’d bought it new on Amazon, it would have cost what ten of these books cost me.

Windhaven by George R. R. Martin and Lisa Tuttle
I already have an old mass-market paperback but I wanted a trade paperback version.

Find Your Strongest Life by Marcus Buckingham
I wanted a trade paperback version to replace the bulky hardcover I already have.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
I wanted this 50th anniversary edition for the cover. I have lots of different editions with different covers.

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
I have already read it, but I didn’t own a copy.

Literary Singapore by The Literary Arts Team of the National Arts Council
As a member of the Singapore Writers’ Group, I wanted to learn more about other Singapore Writers.

Things That Suck by Jason Kaplan
So funny!

10,000 Extraordinary and Puzzling Words by Robert H. Hill
When I saw the word ‘coelacanth’ on the back cover, I had to have it.

We Love Toa Payoh by Urban Sketchers Singapore
I’ve admired these sketchbooks for a while but been unwilling to fork over the full price.

H Plus by Edward de Bono
As stated previously, this guy is a master of the short-but-expensive book, so I grab cheap copies when I can.

China in Ten Words by Yu Hua
I have wanted to read this for a while!

Stylized by Mark Garvey
This is a book about that much praised and maligned touchstone of writing manuals, Elements of Style by Strunk and White.

Tiger Babies Strike Back by Kim Wong Keltner
This book is an answer to Tiger Mother Amy Chua.

A Good Talk by Daniel Menaker
This is a book on an intriguing pop-psychology self-improvement topic.

How to Talk So Teens Will Listen and Listen So Teens Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
I have one of their other books.

The One Thing You Need to Know by Marcus Buckingham
This is another strengths-based management book.

The Truth about You by Marcus Buckingham
This is another strengths-based management book.

Sometimes You Win Sometimes You Learn by John C. Maxwell
Learning from mistakes is perhaps not just the best way to learn; maybe it’s really the only way to learn.

Bright Side Up by Amy Spencer
Positive psychology strikes again.

Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I have his other books.

Bounce by Matthew Syed
This is an attractive green hardcover about competition, success, the importance of practice, or the myth of talent. Or something. Could be a rehash of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers but with even less science.

I bought these four books at Velocity in the hallway, where Junior Page had set up a bunch of tables offering discounted books for both children and adults.

When the price is “3 for $20 (or 1 for $10)”, buying four books is not optimal. Nevertheless, I wanted these four books, and only these four books.

Chinese Whispers by Ben Chu
I know a lot more about China than I used to, but in a lot of ways it’s still a black box. This book (which when I first saw it I thought was a novel) is devoted to busting some common myths that circulate in the way that the message does in the game of ‘telephone’—or, as the game is sometimes known, ‘Chinese whispers’.

No One Understands You and What to Do about It by Heidi Grant Halvorson
Reading First, Break All the Rules might make you think that people are so unique that we’re all somehow fundamentally unknowable. But according to this book, there are ways to mitigate this feeling of isolation.

Six Frames by Edward de Bono
I read and loved Six Thinking Hats. This is another of the many, many “creative thinking” books by a true master of the short-but-expensive book, Edward de Bono.

Born Liars by Ian Leslie
I was worried I’d already bought and read this book because it looked familiar. That was just because it has been on my wishlist, however. Glad to have bumped into it at a good price!