For those Malaysian students with BB1M (a type of book voucher), and have an urge to splurge on a multitude of paperbacks of every sort.
I would recommend the Big Bad Wolf book sale.
In an event that spans 19 days, open 12 hours a day. The book sale brings imported books from Europe over to Southeast Asia. To quote a post from its old website, established in 2009 at Dataran Hamodal (Malaysia), the Big Bad Wolf book sale is “a warehouse sale by remainder bookstore BookXcess, dealing in various genres from best-sellers and children’s books to specialist titles and deluxe coffee-table tomes”.
Though this year the fair was held in Subang Jaya, which is a 5-6 hour bus trip from the University. Two years ago it was held in Johor Bahru, Danga City Mall, which is around a 30 minute drive away. Though it was a somewhat tedious journey up, and a rather puzzling jaunt around Subang Jaya searching for The Square, One City. Ultimately, it was worth it.
With a 75%-95% discount on a myriad of genres including fantasy, young adult, general fiction, literature and non-fiction. That’s plenty to chose from, personally I barely managed to stagger away with around 24 books after spending at least 2 to 3 hours just browsing the though the plethora of book that were made available. The books themselves were laid out on massive tables sprawling throughout the mall on two floors with numerous sales attendants constantly rearranging the books and appending more books to the nearly overflowing stack. As such, no two visit to the book sale could ever be the same, they’ve certainly covered their replayability factor. I’m almost tempted to revisit in order to check up on books that I might have missed the 1st round, but alas, my wallet says otherwise.
While traversing through the diverse books, inevitably one would start to feel a bit peckish. Fortunately, there is an overabundance of food options to choose from, be it your humble mamak corner, to a Bakery & Boutique establishment, or a roadside shawarma. The shawarma was a particularly good pick as it was close by, portable, tasty, and reasonably priced. A great way to end the day.
P.S. Pictures from and belong to, The Big Bad Wolf by BookXcess and Flickr.