Sunday, January 20, 2013

My favourite time of year - Lifeline Bookfest

I love a lot of things in life, but very close to the top of that list is the Lifeline Bookfest. Twice a year the wonderful charity organisation Lifeline gathers all the lost books in Brisbane together and tries to give them a home AND raise a bunch of money to support those less fortunate. 

I'm sure you're all thinking, "I'm sure it's big but really, how big could it be?" Well I'm glad you thought such a specific question. There are three sections, high quality, priced and unpriced and each section is at least the size of a basketball court. The unpriced section is about 2.5 times that. Yeah, there are a lot of books. A LOT.


When you walk down the aisles of books you can see a real pattern of what was popular the year or two before. This year? Tonnes of Twilight. Like 80-90 copies - at least. Also, I'm hoping it was a joke by a browser and not an actual choice of the organisers but the majority of copies of Twilight were not in kids or fiction. They were in the literature/classics section. Disturbing.

We were a little more conservative with our purchases this year, mainly because we still have 85% of last year's purchases unread but also because there was a bit of a drought of our usual buys. We normally come home with 3-5 Stephen King books but this year they were in short supply. Weird. But anyway, here our new books are, in all their awesome bookish glory.


Rose Madder - Stephen King
Koko - Peter Straub
Red Dwarf: Backwards - Rob Grant
Weapons of choice - John Birmingham
Without Warning - John Birmingham
After America - John Birmingham
The Dark Half - Stephen King
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
About A Boy - Nick Hornby
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Son of Rosemary - Ira Levin
The Passage - Justin Cronin

Aaaaaaand, perhaps most exciting for all I made this little purchase.


When I left home I was Harry Potter-less, since apparently it was important that my sisters had copies to read and since mum bought them they'd stay in Cairns. Whatever, didn't make sense to me either. Anyway, I treated myself to a boxed set of the books a couple of years ago, but the adult's editions were the only ones that came with the final book included, and I hate mismatched sets so they're the ones I bought. It always made me sad not to have  the colourful children's covers I grew up with, so what the heck, now I have TWO sets of HP. Twice the fun!!

And I found this nifty edition of The Chamber of Secrets which I haven't seen in stores before. 


So happy! 

In other news, it was Tom's birthday yesterday and I made him this cake. I'm pretty proud of the awesomeness I produced so I hope you don't mind my shameless self promotion/bragging.


6 comments:

  1. Booooooooks! I am so so so into that bookfest it's ridiculous. I'm just like 'TAKE ME TO AUS NOW SO I CAN GO!' to, like, the world.

    Yaaaaaay Harry Potters! I discovered the other week when I was seeking out my books that I have allll the childrens covers, apart from for The Deathly Hallows, which I have the adult cover for. Which is completely LAME so I'm going to have to look out for the children's edition of it cause I too like my sets to match!

    ps MIDDLESEX! I loves it! Also it's where I live, so. Yeah.

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    1. Dude, it's so cheap that you may as well book a flight over here, because you'd about break even. And it would be fun blogger catch up times, which would make the book shopping SO much better.

      I quite like the adult covers, but I love the kid covers more - and mixed collections are gross, they stress me out - so definitely find a matching DH! Look at me encouraging you to buy books you already have, I'm the worst friend!

      I remember seeing Middlesex in a bookstore when I was like 13/14 and thought it was about someone in the middle of a sex change. I'm not proud of that. *blushes*

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  2. That bookfest looks amazing! Give us plenty of notice for next year so we can all meet up with you there, 'k?

    I totally support having multiple sets of whatever books you like. None of mine match and I've got multiples of most of the titles and that doesn't mean I have a problem with buying books. not at ALL.

    Also, I thought Raincoast pubbed the books in Oz? Those look like Bloomsbury eds from the photo.

    Your cake looks totally yummy. I've always thought that layer cakes were ambitious which is why I rarely make them. But I confess I have to ask what that is erupting out of the top?

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    1. It's amazing and if you ever make a trip to Aus it's well worth organising a holiday around! (I should be paid for spruiking their sale so well! )

      Bloomsbury are the standards here in Aus for HP, is it the same in the States?

      It's a chestburster alien from the Alien film franchise - Tom's a HUGE fan.

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  3. Looks like heaven to me!

    Shelleyrae @ Book'd Out

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