Bookstore browsing

Over the weekend I checked out a Nigerian mall. It’s very different from a typical mall; this one has a small footprint and goes up 5 floors. It is brand new and not everything is finished. There is a bookstore that I perused; I was happy to find that books here are much cheaper than in South Africa, though still more expensive than in the U.S. It has an interesting mix of books: I would say that about 1/3 of the shelf space is dedicated to Christian books, 1/3 is fiction, and the other 1/3 is split between everything else but dominated by business books.

CDs are really expensive ($25-30 for a CD by a major U.S. artist). DVDs are actually cheaper, and after looking at a couple you realize why: they are mostly fakes. Unlike Chinese ones, which came in sleeves and made no pretense of being legitimate, these come in shrink-wrapped hard cases and look good until you look at details like misspellings or bad punctuation in the descriptions on the back.

We saw a movie in a theater that was small but as good as any in the U.S. -- reclining stadium seating, (too) loud sound, etc. The price was also U.S.: $10 for a movie. In SA it's only about $6.