The Groovy Giraffe: Unbelievably Cheap Books

In this family, we love books and we love reading. New reads are the one thing I just cannot say no to.

Aside from the problem of our overly full bookshelves, I am very glad that the children have both developed a love for books. Noey is a total bookworm who is happy to spend time by himself reading. I treasure those moments as it allows me to take a good break! Meips too has, I am glad to say, finally also become interested in books. She's the one who makes me read the same book over and over again, much to Noey's chagrin. Her favourite thing to do is to pretend to read a book aloud to an imaginary audience. She loves being "teacher" and it's so cute to watch. I really need to get it on video soon.

Anyway, my point (before I got a bit carried away) is to share with you a great new online bookstore that I recently discovered. I buy a lot of my books online, from Book Depository, Fishpond and now, even from Amazon because the prices are much cheaper than what I get in regular retail stores, and shipping is free. The downside is that the wait for the book to arrive can be quite long. So you can imagine that I was really excited to discover an online bookstore based right here in Singapore that offers some super low prices for books AND allows you to receive your order within 3 working days!

The Groovy Giraffe is not your usual book store. It is Singapore's first online remainder bookstore. What that means is that they stock brand new, overstock and overprint books, which are also known as remainder books. These are extra books, if you will. What The Groovy Giraffe does is to obtain these books directly from publishers (who are trying to clear their stock) at a discount and then pass on these savings to customers. These discounts can be as high as 80% off the retail price! 

When I first checked out the website, these are what got me excited:

I love cookbooks and if you follow my cooking posts, you'll know that I love Jamie Oliver, so Jamie's America at only $14.90 (nearly 70% off)? I didn't even need to think -- it went straight into my cart. I added Nigella Fresh for good measure, since it was only $12.90 (more than 60% off). There is also a good range of other Cookbooks available that I am eyeing like Jamie Oliver at Home, Bread Revolution and Gordon Ramsey's (or rather, Jason Atherton's) Maze. At these prices, it's very very tempting!

The other sections that I had a lot of fun browsing were the Babies and Children sections. 

More than cookbooks, I really cannot resist buying books for the kids, so I was very thrilled to find popular titles and authors stocked. Check out these prices for Dr Seuss books! $3.90-$7.90, and for hardcover editions! 

They have many of my children's favourite authors: Aside from Dr Seuss, there's Sandra Boynton, Eric Carle and Julia Donaldson, to name a few. There are also familiar characters like Curious George and the Berenstain Bears.

A copy of Romp in the Swamp from the Harry and His Bucketful of Dinosaurs series also made its way into my cart, to Noey's pleasure.

I am also eyeing a few Fiction titles from Jodi Picoult and, erm, the Hunger Games Trilogy for myself.

Now you know why I get a bit broke when I start book-shopping.

Of course, these being remainder books, there isn't as extensive a selection available here as there is in a "regular" bookstore. But you might be surprised by the range when you spend some time browsing.

If you're out for a real bargain, ie. books that are even cheaper than cheap, do check out the Bargains section. Here is where you will find the biggest discounts as these books while new, might display some degree of shelfwear or have some markings on them like a stamp, a black marker mark or speckles on the bottom of the book. Not to worry, these blemishes are indicated in the description so there's no unpleasant surprise when the books arrive. Probably not so great for gifts but perfectly acceptable for a home collection, me thinks.

Other than their collection of cheap books, the other thing that impressed me about The Groovy Giraffe was the great service. I'd ordered my books and promptly put them out of my mind. All my online book shopping has trained me to expect a long wait before my books arrive, you see. I'd forgotten to track my package, but not Pearlin from The Groovy Giraffe. More than 3 working days had passed and I received an e-mail from Pearlin telling me that they were tracking my package and noticed that its status was "Undelivered". I figure the courier probably came by when we were out. They then pro-actively provided me the tracking number for my package so that I could follow up with the courier to get my books.

Then when I realised that there was a mix-up in the number of copies of certain books in my order, Pearlin arrived at my doorstep the very same day to rectify this. I have to applaud their dedication to this.

SPECIAL DISCOUNT!

As if the prices aren't low enough, you might be happy to know that readers of this blog can get an additional 5% off ALL PURCHASES (except those in the Bargain section)! Simply use the code  GET5OFF at checkout and start saving! Shipping within Singapore is a flat fee of $5 but all orders above $60 ship for free.

Have fun shopping at www.thegroovygiraffe.com! Bookworm, out.

*We are participating in an affiliate programme with The Groovy Giraffe and received store credits and a discount for our purchases in order to write this review. All opinions (and the empty wallet) remain my own. There's just no denying these prices!