The Book People Lucky Dips

monkeymatt

jo_b wrote: »

Any chance you could list the books that you did receive, please?

OK here go's

Mr Men - Colouring & Activity Book £3.99
Thomas & Friends - Colouring & Activity Book £3.99
Barbie and the Magic Of Pegasus - Colouring Book £3.99
Barbie the Princess and the Pauper - Colouring & Activity Book £3.99
Action Man - Puzzle Activity Book £3.99
Transformers Energon -Colouring Book £3.99
DK My Tool Book (With press out pieces) £4.99 x 2
You can Scoubidou £4.99 x 2
Hush Little Chick (Story Book) £4.99 x2
K is for Kissing a cool Kangaroo (Story Book) £4.99 x2
Peter Rabit - Storytime Volume one £9.99
Peter Rabit - Storytime Volume two £9.99
Do's & Don'ts (Todd Parr) £3.99
Things that make you feel good, things that make you feel bad (Todd Parr) £3.99
Billy and the Big New School (Story Book) £5.99
Harry's Home (Story Book) £5.99

So that little lot has a RRP of £103.80

That is not bad for a spend of £14.00 and I have another 10 free ones to come.:T

My little girl is happy with her books and I have a couple of boys books to give as presents.

Good purchase all around.:j

purplepatch

purplepatch wrote: »

My boys 9-12 lucky dip arrived today

Tom's Midnight Garden - Philippa Pearce
Stravaganza City of Masks - Mary Hoffman
The Wind Singer - William Nicholson
Emily Davison Suffragette - Claudia Fitzherbert
The Demon Headmaster Takes Over - Gillian Cross
Zero Option - Chris Ryan
The Wooden Cow - Terry Denton
Foul Football Triumphant Teams - Michael Coleman
Discoveries Explorers and Traders
Motor Racing - Tony Norman

If I'm honest, am very disappointed. My stepson, I would say, is a pretty good reader, he's just finishing off the Harry Potter books and seems to follow it all in great depth. But I would say a lot of these books look too old for him, in particular the Zero Option book which is about an SAS sergeant being tasked to assassinate the British Prime Minister (story involves the IRA and an Iraqi who has defected to Libya after the Gulf War) and if he fails his 4 year old son will die - surely that isn't suitable for a 9yo for goodness sake!! I also can't see him being remotely interested in the Suffragette book, nor the Football, Motor Racing and Explorers and Traders books (the latter 2 being a couple of skinny paperbacks to make up the 10 I suppose). Pants. Think I'm going to send a moany email. Which is a shame as I've always rated the Book People very highly.

There's a message on the answerphone from Book People in response to my email. They said that they shouldn't have included the Chris Ryan book (I think it's adult fiction!), apologised for the mistake and said they were refunding £3.50 being half the cost as a goodwill gesture (despite my saying that most of the books were unsuitable - they didn't address those comments!). As I've decided that only 4 of the 10 books look like his cup of tea (and of them, Amazon say that 2 of them are suitable for 12 and over!- my guess is that only 2 of them will be read for the time being) I have to conclude that lucky dips for 9 year old boys are not a great buy even for £3.50. Heyho, you win some, you lose some.

Yorkshire-Lady_3

I ordered the under 5's lucky dip - and received an adults selection.
I phoned and they are despatching an under 5's LD tomorrow.
The adult one looked very good value though, I think there was well over £100's worth of value.

Sally x

harryharp

I ordered the teenage lucky dip for my 2 boys who are avid readers. Unlike the younger age ones it doesn't give a choice of boy or girl. When the books arrived they were mostly aimed at teenage girls, which was a bit disappointing. Maybe it's just indicative that older boys don't generally read much..?

spuds_2

When I've ordered these before, it has been very hit and miss. Some selections were great value, in others only a couple of books were worth having. I didn't bother this time because we've had so much from the BP this year that I would be bound to get duplicates of what we'd already bought.

There were complaints last year about the suitability of some of the selections and although I think they say 'parental discretion may be needed' it's a shame that they haven't addressed this properly. I still think the fiction collections are the best value - and you do know what you are getting.

susanmc

Has anyone tried the girls 6-9 group?

My daughter will be 6 in October and is already a very good reader. The under 5's would be too young but I was concerned the books in this group might be too advanced. I suppose I could always put them away for her if they are.

spiddy100

I've just got mine. An adult fiction lucky dip which I'm really disappointed with:

Mark Obmascik, The Big Year
Susan Fletcher, Eve Green
JG Ballard, The Drought 1966
Ross Leckie, Carthage
Maggie Craig, The StationMaster's Daughter
Josephine Cox, Outcast
John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids
Ian Fleming, You Only Live Twice
Colin Dexter, The Way Through The Woods
Bernstein and Woodward, All the President's Men

I think there's one of those that I'll read, and one which could possibly be a present, but the others are charity shop fodder :[

I also got an Under 5s selection:

Barbie colouring book x2
Catherine and Lawrence Anholt, Harry's Home
You can Scoubidou
Beatrix Potter, Peter Rabbit Storytime
Tough Stuff sticker book
Todd Parr Dos and Don'ts
Dorling Kindersley, My Toolbox
Pat Thomson and Jonathon Allen, It's So Unfair
Giles Andreae and Guy Parker-Rees, Giraffes Can't Dance

I think it's reasonable value for £7, but the scoubidou book (boy, they have a lot of those to give away!) is no way suitable for an under 5, and I'm disappointed that there are so few story books in there. Barbie colouring books rather useless for my two boys but I'll probably find a home for them.

Not sure if I have grounds to complain really, but I don't think I'll bother next time.

gmc_3

Has anyone tried the Adult non-fiction selection?

Thanks

alanclose

I did, not the greatest, the worst has to be this one

Very small book on Plato
A couple of historical bios
A book on the science of sleep
Richard and Judy wine guide (hardback)
Elizabeth Taylor Bio
Dame Judy Dench Bio
A decent book on the Boer War
and a rather obscure adult Fiction book

aubergine

I'd ordered some before which I'd been fairly pleased with, this time the kids selections were pretty good, but I was disappointed with the adult selections. Here's what I got:

Girls 9-12
Deadly Famous - Richard Kidd £4.99
The Wanderer - Sharon Creech £4.99
Black Angus - Rita Murphy £4.99
Friends and other tiny problems - Rosie Rushton £6.99
Kite - Melvin Burgess (hb) £9.99
Dreadful Acts - Philip Ardagh £4.99
Measle and the Dagodon - Ian Ogilvy £5.99
Likes me, likes me not - Mary-Kate and Ashley £3.99
Badger on the Barge - Janni Howker £4.99
How to save the planet - Taylor £3.99

I make that £55.90. My daughter aged 12 who insisted we get 9-12 and teen (with view to giving some as presents to younger friends) only really fancied the first 4, the rest do look good for younger readers. Of the sample 14 pictured in the brochure we got 1 the same.

Teen
Hollyoaks, playing with fire - Kirsty Neale £4.99
Bend it like beckham - Narinder Dhami £5.99
Last Chance - Sarah Dessen £4.99
Kissing the rain - Kevin Brooks (hb) £12.99
Reckless - Sue Mayfield £4.99
The Dark behind the curtain - Gillian Cross £4.99
What my mother doesn't know - Sonya Sones £4.99
Blood Money - Anne Cassidy £5.99
Over to you - Roald Dahl £6.99
Missing. When Lightening strikes - Meg Cabot £5.99

Total £62.90. Daugther (12) didn't fancy the first 2 but liked look of the rest. I don't think we got any of the 35 picured in brochure, but got a couple by same authors.

Adult Fiction
Papillon - Henri Charriere £4.99
The big year - Mark Obamascik (hb) £12.99
Outcast - Josephine Cox £6.99
When the lights come on again - Maggie Craig £6.99
The harmony silk factory - Tash Aw £7.99
The secret of Annexe 3 - Colin Dexter £6.99
Thunderball - Ian Fleming £7.99
The day of the triffids - John Wyndham £5.99
Vertigo - Boileau & Narcejac £5.99
Scipio - Ross Leckie £7.99

£74.90. Not read any but happy to give most a go, apart from 2 romantic fiction. Apart from about 2 they get good reviews on amazon and are not massively reduced there. Of the 35 pictured in the brochure we got 4 and a couple of different books by the same authors, so this was the truest representation.

Adult non fiction
Richard and Judy Wine Guide (hb) £16.99
The Essential Confucius - Paul Strathern £4.99
Wasted - Marya Hornbacher £6.99
Improve your game; 100 scrabble puzzles-Paul Lamford & Allan Simmons£4.99
Elizabeth (Taylor) - Alexander Walker £7.99
Marlon Brando - Patricia Bosworth £7.99
The Boer War - Thomas Pakenham £12.99
Winning their Spurs,the tottenham hotspur dreamteam-Jeremy Novick(hb)£14.99
Daughters of Britannia - Katie Hickman £7.99
Georgiana, Duchess of devonshire - Amanda Foreman £8.99

£94.90 total. Only a couple of these really interested me. Most of the others I'd have to be pretty bored before I picked them up.
Of the 24 pictured in brochure we got 1, this was probably the least representative selection in the brochure, and for me what I got was not as good as the selection in the brochure - I got lots of historical books and older film stars whereas the brochure suggested more modern health/lifestyle and contempory biographies.

So you take your chances, at 70p a book it's not a bad way to get a bit of cheap reading and read things you probably wouldn't have otherwise.