Last night found me and my sister shopping for a birthday present for our dad. Since our dad too is an avid reader like us, it is always a gift option to purchase a book or two as a birthday present. So we trudged on our way through the muddy and congested streets of Male’ towards Asters on Majeedhee Magu, where everyone was driving/walking in all directions possible to get the last minute shopping done for Ramazan.

To my utter delight, I found that Asters had renewed their stock recently. It is always a disappointing factor with Asters that even if you keep going back there for like even four months in a row, you would always find the same books lining the shelves. So imagine me drooling all over the new titles to be found, and then the mother of all shockers, the price tags on the books had been taped over with new prices and believe me books aren’t cheap to come by in Maldives as it is.

I found myself so disappointed because a book that had recently cost Mrf 120/- was now priced at Mrf 140/-. I asked the salesgirl whether the prices had been upped and her reply was yes they had been. I asked for a reason, fully knowing one would never come forth and found myself muttering about the damn recession and its implications. I know, I know, it doesn’t even come close to signifying the full effects that a recession such as the one we are going through could really impact the way of life of Maldivians. But as an adamant book lover who always manages to over spend when it comes to books, I can’t help but feel sad about the price hike.

And to make things worse, I found a response to my order from Barnes & Noble that they had cancelled the order for whatever reasons, that at the moment God and only the respective Barnes & Noble personnel know of. This was a real blow because I had been salivating the last couple of days on getting my hands on those titles and that stoic email just helped to worsen things along!

But on the bright side, I did manage  to place the same order on Amazon, and am keeping my fingers crossed for the moment. And about the price hike, I plan on hitting the Asrafee book shelves soon, to see whether they have got any new titles in AND whether they too have wreaked havoc on the price of the titles!

So till my next review which should be up pretty soon, happy reading everyone! xoxoxo