After a particularly stressful day at work, I usually make it a point to visit Casumo. Sometimes to play games, other times to relax and unwind in one of its many bars or cafés.
One café I like in particular is the Casumo Book Lover’s Café, which opened early this year. Being like a mini library, the café has a pretty good selection of books in various different genres. Literary fiction, poetry, mysteries, sci-fi & fantasy, horror, and other mass market genres.
Usually, there is at least one book of a certain genre in stock at one of the shelves. Once in a while, there are certain days or weeks dedicated to a certain genre, and the shelves are stocked with books focusing on that particular genre.
The proprietor of the café is herself a book lover, and she came up with the idea to encourage people more people to read. One of Casumo Book Lover’s Café’s requirements of its visitors is to first pick one book before taking a seat and ordering. Most of the time, you didn’t have to read the book, but they prefer if you do. The café’s servers and baristas are all book lovers themselves, and you can engage them about the particular book you’ve chosen. You can choose to ask about the author, the book, or even about the genre you’ve chosen. If, by chance, the employee you’re talking to has not read the book in question before, it was assured that at least one other employee had read it, and they would refer you to them. At times, if you’re not sure which book you should pick, you can also ask for a recommendation from them.
It was a rather ingenious move on the part of Casumo BL Café’s proprietor, Annalyn. Because the city is never short on book loving people, the café was sure to be a success.
Once in a while, the café also holds book launchings or meet-and-greets to various authors. Just the other day, they had fantasy writer Terry Brooks in for book signing and Q&A’s. Last week, horror writer Tim Lebbon made an appearance to promote his newest book.
Besides book promotions, there was also a day of the month reserved for Casumo BL Café’s book lottery contest. This is in cooperation with Casumo casino itself, as most of the time, the book lottery contest had a featured game from the casino. Sometimes, it’s card games like Blackjack, sometimes roulettes or slots, and sometimes even Bingo or Keno lotteries. It didn’t matter if you didn’t know how to play, as you could either ask one of the staff how, or check and practice playing by using Casumo casino’s online app. Click here to read a great review about Casumo casino.
Of course, considering how many book lovers there are in the café, sometimes I wonder if they have ever had a case of book theft before. I hope not. Or if ever there were any, let’s just hope those people really needed the books they were taking home.