Saturday, October 30, 2010

Al-Magrudy's Warehouse Sale

It is said once that "A room without books is like a body without a soul."  Cicero

I've heard about special events where bookstores cut the price of the books or even bargains like buy one and get the other for free. However, the Magrudy's Warehouse Sale is nothing like before! They have books for 1 AED, 2, 5, 10, 15 & 20 AED. I heard about the Sale from my friends but never believed it until I've been physically there, I always thought it was only those 20 to 50 pages books that are covered by dust, but amazingly I found 500 pages books for 1 AED!!!  Hard cover books, both fictions and non-fictions best-sellers are there, all you have to do is to search.

The sale started two days back and it will end today, I visited Magrudy everyday and I found myself buying almost 50+ books at each visit. The first day I visited the bookstore in the afternoon and my first impression was:"Is this a book shop or a fish market?"   I couldn't  focus,  many people were loaded with Al-Magrudy's green bags, camel-with-glasses blue bags, some with trolleys, while I requested the normal bags since I didn't think I would buy many books for most of the books were fictions.

Few minutes later, I found many non-fiction books I always wished to buy, and many other huge books that are worth the price, so I started throwing books in the bag so I ended up with four bags full of books that didn't even cost me 400 AED! While I remember my last visit for Al-Magrudy I ended up buying around 6 books for 700+ AED.

Loving the sale I decided the next day to be there at 7 so I can explore the books without noise and in hope to buy the best-sellers of Non-Fictions books before they end like the first day. Surprisingly enough I found a long queue of people for Al Magrudy to open the door of their shop. I never thought that people in UAE are so much into books!  This made me happy but at the same time I felt sad because I have to wait to enter the shop and the fact that I was the only national there who is so eager to get books.

2 comments:

  1. I wasnt impressed with their sale this year. I have their member card and so get the emails and such. but they never seem to have what I want. Thank God for amazon.

    As for this:

    "A room without books is like a body without a soul."

    Very true, but how many times have you walked into someone's house, seen a decent amount of books, just to find out in conversation that hardly any have ever been read?

    I never thought that people in UAE are so much into books!

    They're all foreigners.

    This made me happy but at the same time I felt sad because I have to wait to enter the shop and the fact that I was the only national there who is so eager to get books.

    Bingo.

    As I said, I used to be a very loyal fan and customer of theirs, but the fact is that book world in Dubai mall has a much larger and wider selection now, and with my tastes, Almost everything I want is a "4 to 6 week" wait. Amazon gets me my books here in a week.

    Nice to see another avid Emarati bookworm. We should exchange favorite books one day.

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  2. Well I never been in the last years sales. However I really found great books in subjects I like, personal development and psychological books.

    Well it's true that nowadays people started to collecting books and not to read, however I can guarantee you there are people who really ready around 300 pages a day at least the ppl I know XD

    As for KinoKuniya Dubai Mall it's my favorite book shop at least for English Books.

    If you want to compare our books check my good reads page:

    http://www.goodreads.com/abdulaziz_mohammed

    thx for sharing ur thought ^_^

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