Easter haul

I wasn’t planning on buying anything when I went to SM today. But I should have known that rarely turns out to be true. There was a tremendous sale at National Bookstore with children’s books originally priced at a couple of hundred pesos were now selling for 75 pesos a piece. How could I resist. So I got almost all of them then made my way to Book Sale where I found a couple of more gems at a fraction of the original price. All in all, I got 12 books for around 1500. Not bad.

Book Binge Day: Buys from Better World Books land in the Post Office

Today was surprisingly a book binge day. I’ve been trying to curb my book purchases for the past few weeks. I feel like an addict in rehab. Since going on sabbatical from my job as an art director a couple of months back, my finances have taken a hit (it was expected, of course). I’m now trying to limit myself to must-buy books. But every time I see a book, something at the back of my head screams MUST BUY! So you can imagine how difficult that is.

Anyway, I got a discount code from Better World Books almost a month ago so it would have been a shame not to use the 15% off. So I ordered some books that I couldn’t get locally. Today, I picked up these books from the post office.

This is the third time I’ve picked up books from the post office and it’s always exciting waiting for the post office people to hand over my parcel.

Here’s the box from Better World Books.

I had to tear it open as soon as I got into the car.

I’ve been looking for Danny Gregory’s An Illustrated Life for over a year now and none of the local bookstores (either Fully Booked, Powerbooks or National Bookstore) carry it.

Flipping through the pages and reading some initial paragraphs made me feel that getting was a good decision. Maybe it can jumpstart my own regular sketch journalling.

This book on Vanishing Points  had pretty good reviews online. But that wasn’t the only reason I had to get this book. After 4 years of art school and after looking through architectural books on perspective construction, I’ve never really found a perspective book that taught curvilinear perspective that actually helps in my line of work. Now I have one.

This third book was bought by Abi. She promises to make me the guinea pig for her own bento lunch experiments. Emphasis on the pig.

After picking up the books, I drove over to Abi’s office and we both went to Megamall for a very, very late lunch and a bit of shopping.

We never leave a mall without passing by a bookstore. In this case Powerbooks. I stumbled onto Frank Santoro’s tabloid-sized Storeyville selling for a meager PhP 242.

A ginormous slash from it’s previous 1200+ price tag. I’m not a fan and it wasn’t a must buy. But for that big a discount and some recommendation blurbs from David Mazzuchelli and Chris Ware, you can’t go wrong.

I couldn’t help it.

Maganda ang disenyo ng mga kahon.

Matagal na akong tagahanga ni Optimus Prime. Kung dumating siya dito at mag-concert sa Araneta Coliseum, pupunta ako. Magdadala pa ako ng malaking placard na susulatan at dodrowingan ng mga energon cubes at puso.

Noong grade school ako noong 1985, nanalo ako ng academic award at dapat bibilhan ako ng laruan bilang premyo sa aking pagkapanalo. Nagiging uso pa lang noon ang Transformers na una kong napanood sa betamax na hinaram sa CS Video sa may Del Monte Avenue. Siyempre si Optimus Prime ang gusto kong bilhin. Kaso sa kasawiang palad, out-of-stock na ang mga Optimus Prime at pumili na lang ako ng Autobot na nalalapit sa itsura ni Optimus Prime. Umuwi ako noon dala-dala ang firetruck robot na si Inferno.

Wala nang nakakatanda kay Inferno ngayon at doon ko unang natutunan ang isa sa mga pinakamahalagang leksyon sa buhay: never settle.

Mukhang plastic na plastic si Prime

Flash forward 20 plus years later at wala pa rin akong Optimus Prime. Naglabas ng 20th anniversary Masterpiece Edition ng naturang robot at inasam-asam kong makuha ito balang araw. Ginawa ko pa nga itong topic ng TFA 180 (Design Theory) presentation ko sa eskuwela.

Sa wakas noong nagkatrabaho na ako, pikit mata akong bumili ng Masterpiece Edition ni Prime sa halagang PhP 5,000. Masaya ako at di naman nagsisisi.

Bagamat nakuha ko na rin si Prime, minsan gusto ko pa ring magkaroon ng ibang Prime. Nagkataong sale ng mga special edition Transformers sa mga toy stores. Half the price kaya pinatos ko na rin. Maganda ang kahon kahit na mukhang cheap at plasticky ang build ng mga laruan. Pwede na rin. Sale naman eh.

"The Dinosaurs" ay ginuhit ni Brian Selznick, ang author ng 2008 Caldecott winner ng "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" for Php 80. "Hurricane" by David Weisner for PhP 40 at journals nang yumaong si Dan Eldon for PhP 480.

Ang talagang panalong nabili ko noon araw na nag-shopping spree ako ay ang mga librong ito. Second hand na sila, medyo bugbog na pero ayos naman ang presyo.

Related Links:

Brian Selznick

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

David Weisner

The Journey is the Destination: The Journals of Dan Eldon

Dan Eldon

ABC-3D a pop-up book by Marion Bataille

Excellent pop-up book. If somebody came up with a thesis like this in FA, dapat uno na yun. Clickety-click here for the demo.

Signal to Noise: The New Edition

Originally published in the Face magazine (the publication that embodied 80s design), Signal  is about at dying filmmaker who wants to make his crowning achievement -  a story of a European village as the last hour of 999 A.D. approached and in which the villagers were convinced would bring about the end of the world.

I bought the original volume at Filbar’s Glorietta for P750 a couple of years ago. It remains one of my favorites of the Gaiman and McKean collaborations and was one of the books I brought for Neil to sign.

This new edition features a lot of bonus extras which make it a good buy for fans of Gaiman and McKean’s work and who may already have the original volume.

The book reprints three stories which have not seen print in a long time but are related to “Signal to Noise” either thematically or stylistically.

The first is “Wipe Out”, an editorial spread for the Face magazine that lead directly to the Face commissioning for “Signal to Noise”. The second story, “Deconstruction”, was also an editorial piece done in the same style as “Wipe Out” and the third is “Borders” which shares the same images and aesthetics as Signal since it they were both done at the same time.

First thing you’ll notice though is that the main story looks a bit different from the original. That’s because it is. Apparently, the old colorsep films are in terrible shape so the entire book had to be reconstructed from various other source materials. McKean also remade some of the images he feels were “rushed” during the serialization of the story. I did a side by side comparison of the book and, yes, some of the images were tweaked, some panels were replaced and the entire book was completely re-lettered.

My quibble though is that possibly because of the reconstruction of the artwork, the book’s images look noticeably darker and bluer. Some of the original detail from McKean’s paintings have been lost. Gone are some of the gritty splatters that made you want to look at the pictures with nose to page.

But alas, I think this cannot be helped. Still, the book is a handsome volume and I do not regret buying it. In fact, this is probably the only time I bought a new edition of a book I already own.

Signal to Noise is available at Powerbooks for P1189.