Big Bad Wolf Booksale 2014 - Great Books at Unbelievable Prices! (Review)

If you're living in Malaysia and you're an avid reader (or at least attempt to be one,*coughs*), chances are you've probably heard of the Big Bad Wolf Booksale. Well if you haven't, it's a yearly booksale hosted by BookXcess where they sell millions of books at mind-boggling crazy prices. It's a sale that is hosted 24hours non-stop for a specific duration of time, Yep you read that right, 24hours non-stop, so if you're too busy to go on 'normal' hours, you can always go at midnight or 3a.m. to satisfy your inner bookworm needs. At the time of this blog post, the sale has ended, but just for references purposes it was held from 5-16 Dec 2-14 at MIECC, The Mines. (*Update:-They have extended the sale!)

Anyway, I am one of those who always anticipated the sale. I've been to the one held last year in 2013, and I went again this year. I went twice because the first time Mister and I went, we left Little A in the care of an upaid babysitter i.e. my sister (if you're reading this, we love you! :p) - so we were in a bit of a rush and I still felt that I needed to buy more books. The second time we went, we took Little A along. From what I can see, these are the differences between 2013 and 2014 BBW booksale.

• there's a bit of a price increase on the books (at least the on books that I bought last year anyway), but still acceptable, and still wayyyy cheaper than retail prices obviously.
• HUGE choices of kids and children's books, much much much more than previous year, and I think it works it enticing the parents to buy more books for their kids! (at least it worked in my case, the second time I went I bought books only for Little A!)
• they have trolley basket this time around! (the second time I went). I think people were voicing complaints that to carry books in boxes while browsing for more wasn't really ideal (hello, heavy??) so the kind team at BBW took this little complaint and found a solution and ta-daaa the second time around, there were trolley baskets provided, woohhoo!! bye bye tired arms and hello more books! :)
• they have customer storage section (only for unpaid items), whereby you can store your books at this section when you need to go somewhere (eat, toilet, surau, browse for more books etc), get a ticket, and come back and get them back later on. this is brilliant i tell you!
• more choices on food and beverages (this time they had it on the mezzanine level), and some play areas to entertain little ones.

Those are some of the differences that I noticed. Now I think there are some people, parents especially, who wants to check out the booksale but didn't manage to because they had no one to look after their kids, and you know, bringing kids especially babies to such huge event with lots of people is very unappealing to a lot of parents. I admit that bringing kids can be quite troublesome, but if you have no choice, here's some way you can do it, and here's how we did it with Little A (she's two - at the age where she does not know how to sit still for more than 5 mins =.=" ).

TIPS ON HOW TO SURVIVE WITH KIDS AT BBW SALE:-

• Take turns. This is how we did it. Shopping together while a toddler is tagging along is highly unproductive and can be annoying, so take turns. Daddy shops first, while Mommy can look after the little one, and after Daddy is done, keep the books at the storage section (see how useful it is??). and then swap the babysitting job so now Mommy can go shopping.
• There's a child's play area where all the F&B are sold, so that's where we took turns to babysit Little A. Mind you, these play areas, they're not free, but they work to keep you child distracted so you can book-shop in peace).
• Try not to go during the kids' naptimes.
• Set a time limit, 2 hours, maximum 2.5 to 3 if you stretch it and probably not more than that. After all kids get bored quite easily and there's only so much things there that you can distract them with anyway.

So these are some tips that I can share. Mind you, it probably won't work with all kids, after all no two kids are alike, but it worked with Little A, so I thought I'd share it. However if your kids are sick it's best not to bring them to the booksale. If you can get a sitter, that's even better, hurrah for you! :)

Here's some books that we got during our first round:-

This particular book by Annabel Karmel was such a steal! At only RM8, it was irresistible. Her books normally cost anywhere from RM50-RM100 in bookstores so to get them for less than RM10? Definitely a WIN!

I didn't manage to snap photos of the ones I got during the 2nd round because Little A raced me to it and opened all the Interactive Books I got her.

Overall, would I recommend BBW? Heck yes, can't wait for the next one!

However if you can't wait for the next one, you can get great deals on books  (read: cheap!) from BookXcess, they have 2 stores, one in Amcorp Mall, the other in Fahrenheit 88. OR, just get it online here.