Ever since I could remember, I love reading books! When I was young (less than 12 years old), I remembered going to my eldest aunt house and got mesmerised by this giant Disney book - all short stories and rhymes about princess, animals and fairy tales and the colors are so fascinating and beautiful and it slowly became a habit of mine to read and read and read.
In highschool, I'd borrowed books after books from the school library. And also rented books as well.
When I started working, a portion of my salary goes to books and magazines.
Now that I'm a mother of 2 kids, I'm still reading. Of course nowadays, I'd prefer e-books anytime since I can read it using my iPad at night after my kids went to bed. But that doesn't mean I've given up reading paperbacks. Just that nowadays, I only buy paperbacks if it's a good book worth keeping and also those crafts and activities books for my boy.
And since I'm a SAHM, I don't have much luxury to go out and browse around books for myself or my kids, so what else but to buy them online? In fact, I actually love buying things online as I get to compare the prices and read other people's reviews on the products before making a decision to buy.
For books, the first website I go when I want to buy books are of course: The Book Depository
What I love most about them is they offer worldwide shipping FREE!
OK, if you take a look at their books and compared them to Amazon, of course you can clearly see Amazon's prices are cheaper but because I'm living in Malaysia, a lot of books are not allowed to be shipped to Asian countries (like Malaysia!) and even if Amazon do ship over to Malaysia, the shipping fees is very very high! There are times when the shipping fees cost more than the books itself!
This is definitely the website I go to and I've bought loads and loads of books from them. Delivery takes from 3-4 weeks time and so far I've only experienced one time where my delivery was lost in transit and happy to note, The Book Depository honors my purchase and promptly resend a new set of books for me free in charge!
If you have never try them before, do give it a try!
** Updates on 8th August 2012:
My buying tips are as follows:
- Check out the books on Amazon, better if they come with preview function so I can have a look at the contents and outline.
- Read through the customers feedback (I always read those with 1-2 stars first)
- Copy the book's ISBN code (every book has their own unique code) from Amazon website and paste to The Book Depository
- Buy from The Book Depository!
