When it comes to book buying I’m a bargain hunter, and I like that I can get cheap books here. This of course depends on reading taste, and the books I read are the ones that tend to show up in Book Sale eventually. I’ve gone into really nice bookstores in other countries and chose not to buy a thing, because upon conversion I knew I’d get a better deal back home. (The exception is my copy of …Kavalier and Clay from the Strand, more of a souvenir.)

I like that Filipino readers talk to each other about books. My 2011 reading list has titles I discovered because of the local book bloggers I follow.

I don’t like that some ebooks are more expensive or not available to me at all because I’m in the Philippines. I know there’s distribution drama behind it, but come on.

I wish that we had a really nice and accessible library, but I have to admit — I had access to a fairly good one in college, and all I did there was use the Internet kiosks. I work in a place with a really good one now, and I’m there only to buy stuff from the coffee shop. I’m a reader but I’m the type who would rather own than borrow, and if a book is too expensive then I wait for a sale or tell myself I can live without it. I visited the New York Public Library and spent some happy hours in the ones in Singapore and Hong Kong, but I don’t think I’ll be spending much time browsing there on a regular basis if I lived in those places.

But maybe if the books were sent to my house? Like a Netflix for books? Years ago my husband and I started a service kind of like this — we sold a book cheap, sent it to the buyer, and after a certain amount of time they could send it back and get another one. (Or not send it back at all and it’s like they just bought a book.) We stopped doing it because it was time-consuming, and courier services didn’t offer cheap pickup and delivery then as they do now.

Is there something like that here now? Because I’d definitely try it.

Anyway, the Filipino Reader Conference is happening on September 14. Babysitter’s been booked, so I think I can go. See you all there!