As you know from the special Books Incoming after my trip, I went a little bit book buying mad on the trip to Malaysia – and so here we are with the wrap up (there’s a pun there because they were all wrapped in plastic) of my trip to the bookshop in Kuala Lumpur.
So our hotel was right near one of the big mall complexes – and like in Manila, where there was one mall there tended to be more. So I went off on a nice wander around one early evening to see what I could find, in the hope that one of the things I would find would be a book store – and there was, hidden at the top of the third (or maybe fourth) mall I went in, was Book Xcess.
And as you can see, it was lovely and big – there was about the same behind me as in front as I took this picture, and it had a really interesting mix of English language books -mainly American editions, but also a few British ones – you can see the Jenny Colgan Rules from the series I mentioned the other week which is a UK version.
There was a big mystery section as you can see – but although I combed it carefully, there was a sad lack of American Cozy Crime novels, which was a shame because I was really hoping this might be the solution to filling in some gaps in the series that I read. But it was mostly the more hardboiled end of the spectrum, which a healthy dose of British authors along side the US ones.
It was a big cramped around this romance shelves, so there’s a bit of duplication as I tried to get all the stuff in here. And you can see the mix of stuff – British editions of saga-y type novels like the Anna Jacobs; Nick Hornby who isn’t usually romance but I think this one is actually a love story; then a load of contemporary romances Kate Clayborn, more Jenny Colgan and then books I haven’t seen before like Hope Nicely’s Lessons for Life and The Hook Up Dilemma which are both a few years old but I don’t remember coming across anywhere previously.
And more of the same on this one – but also can I just say it also shows how many different sizes the books where. Everything is pretty much the same size in the romance category in the UK – usually when I’ve got something bigger or smaller it’s been because it’s a US import – so you can see what I mean about how many different places they’re drawing their English-language editions from. If you look back at that Books Incoming every book I bought back from Malaysia is a different size/format. Every. Single. One.
I was interested by the tag “Classics and Literature for this shelf” because it’s such a random mix and with so little of what would be considered the classics in a UK store – ie the Dead White Man canon, plus Jane Austen. It’s actually mostly relatively recent prize winners with a fair bit of P G Wodehouse.
General Fiction was the section I found trickiest on the purchase front -t here was lots of stuff here that was really tempting based on the blurb, but the cellophane that everything was wrapped in meant that I couldn’t have a sample to see what they were like. I’m still regretting not buying Agatha of Little Neon: it sounded intriguing but also felt fairly literary prize candidate which isn’t really my vibe as you know but I had limited space in the suitcase – except it’s much more expensive in the UK so maybe I should just have done it, even if it could have been a book that sat on the shelf for years.
And the same applies really to Madonna of the Mountains and Super Host – which all turned out to be a couple of years older than I thought they would be (because I hadn’t heard of them or come across them at all) but could have gone either way on the enjoyment front. And of course when I was making all my choices I was doing it pretty blind – because I was in the back of a mall without access to the internet because there was No Signal so I couldn’t check Goodreads etc. So it was a bit of a lottery.
And I had made my initial choices – of three – when I got to the till and the lovely shop assistant pointed out the offer so back I went again – and as you know my final choice was one of the Blind Dates with a Book, which turned out to be a Hemmingway, which only increased my FOMO on the others books I had left behind. But it was free, so it doesn’t matter right?
And they had two tables and the wall display you can see behind the signs of blind date with a books – so they were very tempting and it remains such a clever idea, I think every time I see it, but the problem with it (for me at least) as we see with the fact mine turned out to be a Hemingway is that when you read as many books as I do, the chances of getting something you’ve already read (even if in the case of the Hemingway it’s a decade or more ago) really increases.
Anyway, I had a ball in the bookshop, probably was in there for nearly an hour all in, and I was very, very glad that my suitcase was the sort that has a zip that expands it for a bit more capacity on the way home!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 