Brit Lit, book chicks & laughable matters

It must have been stuck between Milan Kundera and Ken Kesey. Sometimes, a vague notion is all it takes because I had not read the author, Sophie Kinsella, a former financial journalist, before. I was simply looking for a book under K in a bookstore abroad. When I saw the title, I thought: Is this a sign?

It’s not a life-altering book, it’s not the one book that you will take to a deserted island, it’s not the book you will talk about to impress a date. This is not a Martin Amis or Nadine Gordimer kind of book. But Confessions of a Shopaholic is a book you will take on a plane ride or to the doctor’s waiting room because it’s entertaining and funny, the kind of lightweight book that serious book lovers like to dismiss.

In a consumerist society, the book’s character Becky Bloomwood, a financial journalist with uncontrollable shopping urges and creative ways of eluding her bank manager, shows readers the evils of shopping and yet you’ll be far from reformed after reading it —you’ll end up buying beyond your credit limit anyway.

That instant when you make a purchase, Becky Bloomwood says, "(The saleslady) hands it to me, and I almost want to cry out loud, the moment is so wonderful. That moment. What’s it like? It’s like going hungry for days, then cramming your mouth full of warm buttered toast. It’s like waking up and realizing it’s the weekend. It’s like the better moments of sex. Everything else is blocked out of your mind. It’s pure, selfish pleasure. I walk out of the shop, still in a haze of delight. I’ve got a Denny and George scarf!"

Becky falls in love with a PR guy with both a conscience and ethics (prior to this, the book had in fact seemed to be based on reality), goes under a mountain of debts and still succeeds in making a career out of giving financial advice.

I mention this book because I’ve been recommending it to girlfriends with a penchant for shopping and British authors, and because Confessions of a Shopaholic (and its sequel Shopaholic Takes Manhattan) is now available in Powerbooks. It was the first book I saw at the opening of the new Powerbooks branch on the second floor of Tower Records in Glorietta.

Yes, they’ve got a new branch and by the looks of it, Powerbooks’ inventory is fattening up. Remember those first days of Powerbooks in SM Megamall when the books that greeted you on the first shelves were Sidney Sheldon’s. Well, after five years in operation, Powerbooks has in fact introduced several authors that you wouldn’t even find in Barnes and Noble (believe me, I tried looking for British journalist Julie Burchill’s anthology of her Guardian column and novels).

Self-confessed book chick Vanessa Yu, who has the enviable job of buying books for Powerbooks, explains that British authors seem to be taking the industry by storm for the past few years, maybe since Bridget Jones exposed her weight problem to the public.

"Some of the books we didn’t know would sell like hotcakes were by British authors. When I was buying, I knew I liked the books and I thought, maybe other book lovers would, too, but I wasn’t sure they would be a hit," she says. "Helen Fielding, before the Bridget Jones movie came out, had a cult following here. But unless you push a title like this, people won’t even know it’s there."

One of the categories Powerbooks is pushing is Filipiniana. They have tieups with publishers to market local books, hold book signings and readings.

So how does she know what books to order? Powerbooks keeps an eye on the bestseller lists abroad, trade journals and new, local releases. Sometimes they rely on good old-fashioned gut feel. When a book becomes a hit in the Philippines, they look at the back lists and order the author’s pre-bestseller books. That’s the main difference between Powerbooks and its sister company National Book Store. Where National gets mostly the bestsellers and popular literature – the more Fabio-esque the cover, the better – Powerbooks also gets authors that aren’t widely known in the Philippines.

Sometimes, a movie comes out and a demand for the book skyrockets like The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter series (though the Harry Potter series had already been selling fast before the movie), the latter of which has sold more than a million copies in the Philippines for both Powerbooks and NBS.

"We really want to promote reading among the young," says Vanessa. "Children are now bored with fairy tales. And it’s funny how children’s books have a big following in the adult market."

One of the things that makes Powerbooks successful is that it offers good customer service. If a book is available at the SM Megamall branch and the customer lives near the Pasay Road branch, they will deliver the book to the branch the customer prefers. "It takes about two days because we have deliveries every day or at most within the week," says Gabby Licauco, Powerbooks operations manager.

One of the pet peeves of book buyers is unknowledgeable personnel on the floor. I once went to a bookstore asking for Stephen King’s On Writing and they told me to go to the suspense/horror section. I said it was an autobiography or, if they wanted to stretch it, a reference book. No, they insisted, Stephen King writes horror books of which they had a wide selection and if it wasn’t there, they didn’t have it. I said: Could you check your data bank? They checked their computer and Stephen King wasn’t even in it.

Still laughing, I went to Powerbooks and, thank God, On Writing was available and in the right section. Maybe it wasn’t that bad. After all, when I went to Borders in Singapore years ago, I found Truman Capote’s Answered Prayers in the religion section.

Gabby Licauco says Powerbooks personnel are better equipped. They can check from their computers the titles and authors of books. And you can ask them to call their other branches for availability. He says the staff is better trained than those in other bookstores plus they’re also book lovers. They have access to trade journals, bestseller lists and newspaper articles. (By the way, I left my name and numbers at SM Megamall for a book on dogs in January and I’m still waiting for a call.)

The Powerbooks branch in Tower Records is the fourth branch to open in five years (other branches are on Pasay Road, SM Megamall and Alabang Town Center). The space is not very big, but it does carry all the categories you’ll find in bigger Powerbooks.

The new branch is certainly one more place for book lovers to stay for hours. And to people who have yet to discover the pleasure of books, our shopaholic Becky Bloomwood would raise an eyebrow and say, "How can you have just blithely led your life ignoring an entire retail sector?"