Next to the garden, the thing that illicits the loudest *gasps* of surprise from any of our guests as they enter our home is our bookshelf. The sheer size of it is enough to make jaws drop. The bookshelves are really an important extension of our family.
Our six tier bookshelf. Plus six huge drawers for the other books that may have silverfish 
Growing up to parents who are both teachers, they can never stress it enough to all of us on the importance of books and reading. In fact, my dad who still teaches at IIUM can never understand the students’ internet researching “culture”. It’s no use telling him about how international journals are now all online, or how useful wikipedia is, he just simply cannot be convinced. “Why can’t you go to the library and do some proper research?” he would always argue.
And to a certain degree, I do agree with him. University students nowadays are so dependent on the net that they cannot even comprehend the thought of some good old library research. When I did my thesis in my fifth semester, I automatically sought out the journal section in our library. I spent half of the day searching thorugh dusty and some never before used journals, and photostating every journal that was relevant to my research topic. Later, some students found out that lecturers has made it compulsory to get journals from the library, they were all faced with a serious dilemma. They turned to look at me, “Err…so where is the journal section?”
Being the nerd that I am, I have been to a few libraries myself. In fact, we used to take weekly trips to the local library in Kajang. (For the uninitiated, it used to be at Bangunan Da to’ Nazir, or now more popularly known as Kajang Satay Haji Samuri) We spent hours looking for that perfect book to borrow. (Children below twelve were only allowed to borrow two books) And we had a lot of fun. So much fun that some books never got returned. But one of the best libraries I have been to is without a doubt the one in UiTM. They have such a massive collection of books. References, Fiction, non-fiction, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and magazines. Sadly, the books are only borrowed when an urgent assignment needs to get done, or when a lecturer insists on the class to get a particular book. The books are sullied and torn, when irresponsible souls are too lazy to photocopy the page. And it was truly painful to see books being treated that way.
The other thing that got to me during my university days was also how quickly the students were able to dispose of their textbooks. Immediately after the final exams, you would be able to see notices everywhere, selling textbooks to the juniors that will be taking the same subjects the following semester. I took great care to especially purchase the original textbooks, (some costing more than RM100) and only photostated the ones that I could not seem to find in the bookstores. And I still have them today, adding them to my growing collection of books. The retort I get when I chide people for selling their textbooks were, “I’m not going to use them anymore after the exams, why should I keep them?”
My bookshelf in my room. The ones that didn't fit in the living area
I don’t believe for a second that any book is indispensable. They each carry with them its own wisdom and purpose. Amongst out massive collection of books is my dad’s basic economics textbook from when he was in secondary school. It’s thin, and in paperback, and heavily dog-eared. And yet, as I flip through the book, I am amazed at how I remembered seeing the same graph in a recent class, and how much more easily it was explained in my dad’s old and humble textbook.
Basic Economics by G.L. Thirkettle, printed at 8 John Street, London in 1965
Our old Americana encyclopedia set, although somewhat obselete in some of it’s content, still manages to entertain me to this day. Look up under ‘comics’, and you’ll find out just how old the comic strip “Blondie” is.
A favourite book I read when I was in preschool was Shirley Temple's autobiography. Sadly, I don't get to see many of her movies.
In a nutshell, treasure your books, and open up your horizons. Don’t be too caught up with the latest bestseller list. There is a whole world out there, with many many books waiting to be read. Indulge them…get away from the internet once in awhile.
