Thebookpeople.co.uk > Reviews (31)

Today started off great! In fact, it was better than great, it was, as near as dammit, dash-dang doodlybug fan-flipping-tastic! Why? Because I got a parcel through the post!! Every day starts off great if you get a parcel! (For one thing, it makes a nice change from the endless bills and junk mail!) So, what was in my parcel, I hear you ask? (Or was that ‘the little voices’?! I hear them sometimes, they tell me to do things!!! LOL. Temporary loss of plot there, sorry!!) Well, there were eleven things in my parcel… and they only cost me £17.97 including £2.95 postage and packing. (That’s £14.98 for the eleven items. I just worked it out on my calculator because I really am hard of thinking tonight!!) What were these items? BOOKS!!!! Eleven books for £14.98!!! And one of them is a newly published hardback!!!

OK, enough with the rhetorical questions now! (They’re beginning to do my head in, so God knows what you must feel like!!!) It’s time to share!! I got my bargain books at www.thebookpeople.co.uk. I’d always shopped for books online with Amazon, and on the high street at Ottaker’s and Smith’s and felt I was getting a pretty good deal with special offers like ‘Buy 3 Get The 4th Free’ or ‘2 For A Tenner’. Well, this site blows the pants off offers like that!! (Especially if you’re like me and read about four books a week!) They offer up to a whopping 75 percent off the R.R.P!!!!

The site itself is very easy to browse through. On arrival, you’re faced with a ‘pick your screen size’ page so just pick and click!! The home page is decorated in a very pretty green and cream (very Spring-like!!) and has all the usual aspects you come to expect from a quality site i.e. a scroll-down side navigation bar for book genres, a search facility, a nice and friendly welcome blurb bit, and a handy bar at the top of your screen for checking what you’ve put in you basket, entering their competitions and reviewing their books. It looks very nice and professional. But I see this as more of an added bonus; the real attraction to this site is their phenomenally low prices!!!

TheBookPeople.co.uk change their selection of book bargains monthly, although you can order from what’s left of their back catalogues. At the time of writing, their featured bargains (on the front page, how convenient!!) are: “The Weakest Link Quiz Book” for £2.99, saving £3 on RRP, the two Bridget Jones’s for £9.99, saving £16.01, and “The River Cottage Cookbook” for £9.99, saving £10. But that’s by no means it!! Oh no, not at all!!

The main catalogue is broken down into sections: Reading (Um, seems to cover everything!), Sports, Hobbies, Health, Outdoors, Famous Faces, Reference, For Cooks, For Toddlers, For Kids, Stationery and Audio Books. Each of these is then broken down into subsections; seems a bit complicated when you explain it but it makes perfect sense when you’re navigating the site. If you already know which books you’re after, then I’d suggest using the search facility as it’s a lot quicker and will tell you straight away whether they have it on offer or not.

Offers not to be missed (well ones I’ve noticed anyway!!) this month are: (I’ll put the RRP in brackets, instead of these little asides I always litter my ops with!)
‘Birthday Letters’ – Ted Hughes £3.99 (£14.99)
‘Man And Boy’ – Tony Parsons £4.99 (£12.99)
‘Scarlet Feather’ – Maeve Binchy £4.99 (£16.99)
‘The Testament’ – John Grisham £4.99 (£16.99)
So as you can see, a new release hardback costs less than a new released paperback on this site!!

It’s the featured collections that really make for a good buy though. How’s about a Frank McCourt 2 pack of ‘Angela’s Ashes’ and ‘’Tis’ in hardback for £9.99 (saving £30) for a bargain? Others I’ve noticed are an 8 pack of Roald Dahl books (including Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, The BFG, Matilda) for £9.99 and The Dave Peltzer Trilogy (A Child Called It, The Lost Boy and A Man Named Dave) for £9.99. The numerous ten book packs are the most fantastically priced of the lot though! The range of these is huge too, so it makes very good value for money, I mean ten books for under a tenner?! It’s got to be good!!! There’s the Female Authors Fiction Collection including Maeve Binchy and Fiona Shawe amongst others, or The Little Brown Paperback Collection including Patricia Cornwell and Linda Fairstein, or even The Picador Paperback Collection including Carrie Fisher, Clive James, PJ O’Rourke and Patrick McCabe. The list just goes on and on!!!

Buying and paying for your books is very simple. Just click on the ‘buy it’ link by the picture of it and then click on the shopping basket link at the top of the screen. Your order details should be now onscreen, and you pick your preferred delivery option. Standard delivery costs £2.95 (unless you spend over £25 and then it’s free!!) and is delivered in 2 – 5 days (mine came in 6, but I ordered it on a Saturday night and it was Bank Holiday Monday this week, so no complaints there!!). For the impatient amongst us, there’s the express delivery option costing £4.95. These are the prices no matter how many or how few books you order!! (No quibble there either, at least you know where you stand!!!) After choosing to be patient or not, fill in your name and delivery address and you then proceed to the checkout area where you can pay in a variety of ways: by credit card (involuntary shudder!), by fax and post (you can send them a cheque!!), by switch card, or wait for it, by SPLASHPLASTIC!!!!!!!! Yey!!!!!!!!!!

All in all, TheBookPeople.co.uk is the best online bookstore I’ve shopped at!! It trounces the prices on Amazon, and every single time I look at it, I see something new I want! Most bestsellers are heavily discounted here and their collections offer fantastic value for money. I really should’ve just gone back to bed with my books this morning as the rest of the day turned out to be pretty awful; I was terminated!!!! Well, not physically obviously because I’m writing this, but employment-wise anyway!! Can’t blame them really as I’ve been off injured for the last three years, so they’ve been very patient; but it’s a bit of a shock nonetheless.

Never mind though, eh? At least I’ve got some decent books to read!!!!

Oh and by the way, in case you’re wondering which eleven books I purchased, I got the new Patricia Cornwell hardback, ‘The Last Precinct’ for £4.99 and a ten pack of Summer fiction for £9.99! The ten pack has ‘A Thousand Acres’ by Jane Smiley, ‘The Full Monty’ by Wendy Holden, ‘The Switch’ by Olivia Goldsmith, ‘Marilyn’s Child’ by Lynne Pemberton, ‘The Question’ by Jane Asher, ‘Off The Record’ by Sue Welfare, ‘The Making Of Minty Malone’ by Isabel Wolfe, ‘One Thing Leads To Another’ by Jamie Holland, ‘Eleven Hours’ by Paullina Simons and ‘Jumping To Conclusions’ by Christina Jones. Watch out for a glut of book ops soon!!!!!