We now carry these finely crafted book jackets, bookmarks, magnetic clips and letter openers from aklateklat.

The leather book jackets come in different types of leather, including suede, and will fit a mass market or trade paperback. What is a book jacket for? It keeps your book safe and easy to carry around. It also makes a nice gift for any book lover. (I would certainly want someone to surprise me with one.) Each comes with a string bookmark weighed down with either murano glass, shells, hand-painted stones, wood, beads, etc. and no two accessories are alike. Each book jacket is unique!

The bookmarks, magnetic clips, and letter openers are carved from wood and adorned with resin moldings.

All aklateklat products are handcrafted in the Philippines.

Our next ship date has not been finalized yet but it will be sometime in September or October. If you would like your books to arrive before Christmas, please be sure to order them now.

It could be out of curiosity or maybe people like to read what other people are reading, our customers usually like to know what other customers are ordering. Here is a peek at a few of the books we have been getting requests for this month.

• The Blue Place by Nicola Griffith
• Cases and Materials on Modern Procedure and Judicial Administration by Arthur T. Vanderbilt
• The Companions (Dragonlance: The Meetings Sextet, Vol. 6) by Margaret Weis
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
• The Deadline: A Novel About Project Management by Tom DeMarco
• Digital Designs for Scrapbooking by Renee Pearson
• Egyptology by Emily Sands
• Getting Started in Hedge Funds by Daniel A. Strachman
• The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling
• Harry Potter 1-7 Box Set by J. K. Rowling
• Hegel’s Logic: Being Part One of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• Jurisprudence by Roscoe Pound
• The Lady in the Tower: The Wives of Henry VIII by Jean Plaidy
• Lime Ricky by Jill Winters
• Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa
• Never: Jens Pulver And the Wednesday Group that Will Change the World by Timonthy J. McKinnon
• Riches Within Your Reach: The Law of the Higher Potential Robert Collier
• Run With the Bulls Without Getting Trampled by Tim Irwin
• To the Ends of the Earth: A Sea Trilogy by William Golding
• Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell
• The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by William Easterly
• The Wrekening: An Ancient Mirrors Tale by Jayel Gibson

We are glad we are able to get books and people together this way. Ah, it does feel good to help.

The Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (Umpil) would like to invite writers and lovers of literature to its 33rd National Writers Congress to be held at the Pulungang Recto, College of Arts and Letters Building, University of the Philippines , Diliman, Quezon City on August 25. The session will start at exactly 9:00 am and will last until 5 pm .

The Congress theme is “Literature and Writers’ Welfare.” Four noted writers will receive the prestigious Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas, sculpted by renowned international artist Manuel Baldemor.

Senator Francisco Pangilinan III will be the guest of honor, and will speak about his legislative vision for writers and Philippine literature in general. Atty. Louie Calvario of Intellectual Property Office will expound recent developments in intellectual property rights agenda, while Ms. Debbie P. Gaite of Filscap (Filipino Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, Inc.) will discuss the model of a collective management responsible for collecting royalties of its members.

A general election of the new set of Umpil board of directors will be held afterwards. For inquiries, please call Vim or Joey at 922-1830.

Adarna House, the country’s first and largest Filipino children’s book publisher is looking for storytellers. No details yet on what the job entails but here is the text of their invitation –

If you have a lot of free time, love the company of kids, and enjoy sharing stories, send your resume to ergoe at adarna.com.ph and gear up to tell us your favorite story!

As part of the upcoming Manila Book Fair, the folks behind Read or Die have all sorts of activities lined up to get us excited about reading. One of these activities is a literary cosplay competition. If you haven’t heard of cosplay, the word is a combination of “costume” and “roleplay;” it is something that started in Japan where fans of manga, anime, videogames, TV shows and other popular Japanese media, dress up as their favorite characters. If you have been to comic or toy or science fiction conventions and have seen costumed characters walking around, then you know what cosplay is.

Now, instead of dressing up as Pikachu, Kenshin, or Voltes V, a Read or Die cosplay asks you to dress up as a literary character. It will be the first of its kind in the world. The Read or Die website has the complete guidelines for the competition. Characters must originally be from a book so that any character from anime, movies, or cartoons with book adaptations that came after are disqualified. Please choose a costume that is tasteful and appropriate for all ages.

Of course you can dress up as a Harry Potter character but chances are you will see many people in the same costume so go back to your library and pick out a character from another book that you like. Read or Die suggests characters from Noli or Fili or The Three Musketeers. There are millions of books to choose from.

If you have questions, please contact Read or Die. I imagine that characters originally from manga and comicbooks (e.g., Superman) will be allowed but this is something that probably has to be confirmed with the organizers. Also, we will try to find out if the contest is open to all ages.

If you have your own blog or website, you must know how much fun checking your site statistics can be. You can learn a lot from the many tools available that tell you how many people visited your site, their geographical location, how they found you, etc. As of today, most of our visitors access our site from Makati, then Manila, Quezon City, and Cebu City. Hello and thank you for visiting our site. We hope you that you come and read us regularly and that you enjoy your stay.

For those who received a copy of The Daily Prophet carrying the news item about a museum robbery with their copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, here is a clearer photograph of the scene. Since the picture is a bit fuzzy and some of you may not be able to drop by and look at the display for yourself, we have provided a few clues below. Remember, you will have to identify the objects in the museum and, if you can and it would be better if you could, provide a caption for each object as it should be in a museum. Answers can be specific or general, as in the name of a specific bird, or just what that bird is. The person who gets every item correctly and who can provide the best captions (as determined by our judges) gets as a prize one of the items on display.

Clues:
1. red and feathery
2. you need a broomstick to catch one
3. helps to catch flying keys
4. the size of a walnut with silver wings
5. a wizard’s weapon of choice
6. hourglass worn on a chain
7. silvery grey cloak
8. 10 inches in diameter
9. silver with rubies
10. used in Potions class
11. “…neither can live…while the other survives…”
12. sings a different song every year
13. postal service

Also, below is the text from The Daily Prophet. Thank you to Mercury, our resident Harry Potter fanatic, for introducing us to Professor Clio Curio.

Just before sunrise today, a daring robbery occurred at the renowned Museum of Witchcraft & Wizardry in Libis, Quezon City where magical objects, devices, and artifacts of all kinds from the Harry Potter books are on display.

“Everything…Everything is gone!” cried a shaken Professor Clio Curio, curator of the museum. Although the museum’s collection was intact, what the professor was talking about was how all the knowledge in the museum had been stolen.

Signs, captions, and descriptions of the collection, files and records, every bit of information was erased including, unfortunately for the Professor, the information in her head! She remembers nothing about any of the items in the exhibit.

While the top wizards and witches from all around the world are looking for a spell that will restore Professor Curio’s memory, perhaps you, loyal reader, can help out.

In the photograph are 13 items that have to be named and re-captioned. Place the name of the object/device/creature and your own museum-worthy description for it based on the Harry Potter books on the blanks provided. Your captions can be as long as you want. Use the back of this sheet for the captions.

Submit your answers to the museum (that’s Booktopia) or send mail to info at booktopia.com.ph. The correct answers with the best captions will win a prize!

You may have to visit the museum yourself to see the artifacts themselves. Photographs are allowed and photographs with the exhibit are also allowed but please ask first.

The museum is located at Intrepid Plaza, Libis, Quezon City and you may get in touch with the curator at 634-6544. Learn more about this quest from booktopia.com.ph.

To those who are availing of our free delivery service, please make sure that you have already given us your complete address and phone numbers. If we are unable to contact you on Saturday, we cannot deliver to your home.

Many have suspected that one of the Horcruxes can be found in the Muggle world. I think we may have found it while mixing a special batch of batter for this Saturday’s Harry Potter release. This may sound strange, but, it was in the form of a small cake. However, the Horcrux refuses to be revealed and has magically compelled us to make many cupcakes that look just like it.

Now we don’t know which one is the Horcrux and we need your help. Come on Saturday, at 7am, and have a cupcake. Bite into the cursed cupcake and you win a prize!

This is what J. K. Rowling said on her website after electronic copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows appeared on the internet and also after copies of the hardcover were sold over the internet by an online retailer. The author also expressed disappointment when a review of the book (even yet unreleased) appeared in the esteemed New York Times.

She urged fans to ignore the unauthenticated information that started to spread a few weeks ago. She also gave thanks to the newspapers and bookstores who protect the secrecy of the book until the very minute it is to be released.

If you don’t want to run into spoilers, be very careful where you go on the internet. Sites like Ebay have pages of the book for sale, you can also find spoilers in YouTube and similar sites.

Do not worry, true fans, in a very short time you will know everything!