Thursday, March 31, 2005

The Proper Way To Get The Celestine Prophecy

I never read The Celestine Prophecy when it came out because I was already reading Jung and some Chinese filosophy like the I Ching and felt that I already knew what the book was about. Since I'm taking an online course that asked me to read it I decided to finally do it.
Problem was, the book is out of print in Buenos Aires (and South America). Was a huge best seller, broke all the records but for some reason they didn't print it anymore (probably due to the effects of the Argentinean devaluation of the peso in 2002). I went to the used bookstores but they had no copies.
Yesterday I went jogging and, though I use to take no money with me, brought $20 Argentinean pesos (less than 7 US dollars). I run around Aeroparque, the local airport, and entered to see something. i remembered there was a bookstore, but the clerk was having lunch. So I decided to run to another mall, where there was another bookstore. I entered and asked the guy for three or four books I'm looking for. All of them are temporarely out of print. One of them was The Celestine Prophecy "La Novena Revelación" in Spanish.
"That's a book impossible to get these days" he said
I took a look at the books. I spent some time, and when I decided to go... There was a copy of the book on a shelf.
"I found a copy" I said to the guy.
"What? Where?" he asked me, not believing it.
"On the self helf shelf"
"That's impossible. I put books there three or four times a week... Never seen it..."
He scanned the book.
"This book is out of stock... The system doesn't even recorgnize it... Must have spent years there..."
He finally charged me $15 por the book, the price it has before the devaluation of the peso (US$5 now). Really cheap... The book was in mint ciondition, with a plastic envelope, and I'm reading it right now...

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