Soorabook: Your Story in Real Life

Have you ever been moved to tears by a book? Have you ever cracked up laughing and then spent hours talking about the memories that this book conjured up? Have you ever given a book as a gift and been 100% sure that, not only have they read it before, but there’s quite literally never been anything like it ever printed... Ever? You’re wondering what we’re on about of course. The super successful venture of creating your own book of photographs in Europe and the United States has finally arrived in Egypt, making our memories more meaningful and the process of purchasing gifts for loved ones a breeze…Introducing Soorabook.

Few of us were able to keep a diary as a kid, but we’d always manage to keep pictures and, at the end of the day, they served the same purpose: documenting precious moments in your life. Photographs are, after all, the most beautiful form of expression and the most effective way to preserve events that happen once in a lifetime. How often do you find yourself scrolling through your phone’s gallery, piecing together photos scattered here and there between your laptop and your tablet, trying to pinpoint a memory or an event? The arduous task of compiling them in order to allow a glimpse into your life is not as fun as you’d think it is, but the thing is it should be fun and meaningful as well, Soorabook gets that; a website where you can create a real life book of your own photos in just a few clicks.

When we heard about Soorabook we logged on immediately. The process is optimised so that you don’t have to be an artist or a serial scrap-booker for your finished product to be gorgeous. We had a variety of themes to choose from, from wedding to birthday to Mother’s Day, to be used as a template. We were thinking about who’s birthday it was next or who’s getting married and begun dreaming up the perfect sentimental gift… Until we instead decided we’d gift ourselves and make a whole book dedicated to CairoScene.

Torn between making an amusing calendar – which would be most suitable for work – and a photo album of all our silly pictures we’d snapped and filtered over the years, we obviously went for the latter. We chose a theme and a size for the physical printed photo book and then it was time for some fun. Uploading from either your desktop or direct from social media accounts made putting everything together a breeze. What makes it even easier is the option of letting the system auto-fill the pages, or you selecting what goes exactly where. It even tells you if a photo you’ve uploaded is too low resolution and gives you the option to crop, resize, edit and even add frames and text. It feels more like playing an addictive game with your own memories than building a unique product from scratch.

We found ourselves smiling at the screen before us as we pieced the pictures together and produced an amusing story line, one unique to us. Finally, happy with our result of ridiculous memories, we made the order and quickly got both a confirmation e-mail and a call from the Soorabok team. With the option to track our delivery, we assumed it would take ages before it became a reality. We were wrong.

The very next day we found a nice man from Aramex asking for a signature and handing us a package. It wasn’t long before the whole team was gathered round, giggling and reminiscing, even fighting over who made the most appearances in the high-quality Soorabook that says CairoScene on the cover. Even though the book was for a team of over 20, each one of us felt a part of the story, and there’s no gift more precious than that. Now we feel obliged to make one for our mothers’ birthdays, our best friends’ weddings and even our friends over at CairoZoom.

Check out the site and make your Soorabook here!