By: Samantha Chow (M/6366)
Books have always played a significant part in my life. They shape me into who I am today, one who constantly dreams of places I want to go, people I want to meet and things that I want to do one day.
Having being introduced to books at the tender age of seven when my mom first brought my siblings and I to the nearby Plaza Phoenix’s library, it wasn’t hard for me to quickly pick up on the one habit which I still practice up until today. Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys were my favourites, and I finished up the whole set in about a year. I remember that because not too soon after that the library closed down. Sadly I was too young to mourn the loss of the library membership as I didn’t know what I would miss in the coming years.
Books in Malaysia are abominably priced, you cannot deny that. Imagine, an average novel going at RM30 minimum, how would they expect students like us to buy more books? Don’t even mention ‘best-sellers’, thick historical books or niche designing books for the artistic! My parents do encourage us to read, but even so it is hard to expect them to pay for every book that my two siblings and I want, other than the occasional novel that I persuade my dad to buy.
Until I started part-time piano teaching when I was 17, I couldn’t afford to buy my own books and could only resort to reading them in bookstores, neck aching from the hours of awkward floor-sitting and moving around avoiding people who want to get to the other side. Most bookstores back then were really ‘stingy’, with rows and rows of lovely books wrapped in plastic paper to avoid customers reading them. The shelves were also placed very uncomfortably close and God forbid any chairs or even the smallest area where a person can possibly place his or her bum on to read an unpaid publication!
However nowadays bookstores have realised that Malaysian customers will only buy the occasional book (that they can afford) from stores that they love, and to gain their allegiance most store have provided comfortable book reading areas (think Borders!) and of course employees who don’t stare daggers at you when you go past the front cover of the book.
And so it was that for many years I had to resort to rereading my old books and the occasional flip-through whenever I pass by a bookstore. I did not stop reading but nothing ‘new’ came in. Idleness as well as the lure of the Internet made me lazy to scour for fresh knowledge from books.
That is, until only of late when I discovered a couple of excellent options of getting really cheap or even *gasp!* free books, rekindling in me my love for a quiet hour of just me and the book in my air conditioned room with a hot cup of Milo.
Wait up for Part Two to know how! ;)
Samantha shares her dreams at http://samanthacje.com
Originally published in the Malaysian Mensa magazine Triple M June 2010 Issue
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