Me, Myself, and Books

I love to buy books, actually I'm addicted to books. Almost any kind of books, from philosophy books to comic books (yes, comic is also a book). I don't read the entire books that I bought, maybe I read the introduction, but definitely not all the contents of the book, with the exception of very few interesting books.

Since elementary school, I like to be surrounded by books. Both of my parents, my mother and my father, have oollection of books that I can't understand until now, their books were about medical science or perinatalogy, and administration research. Most of the time, my parents gave books to me and my sister. We're not allowed to buy a lot of toys, but they always more lenient if we wanted books; we were also allowed to rent videos, but let's focus on books here. In addition, my grandparents from my mother side also like to give books to their grandchildren, any kind of books.

Of course, naturally, we accumulated a lot of comics's book, until our parents detected our craving toward comics. Then, they reduced comics consumption. Of course, we moved to novel, and we accumulated a lot of novels afterward.

We had so many books, we even opened a small library for our neighborhood, well actually my smart sister did all the work, but that was the first time I realized we have a lot of books. We rented our books for people in the surrounding area: Jalan Haji Jame/Gang Belimbing, Cilandak KKO. It was for a good cause, because books were relatively expensive at that time, and our neighborhood was not even in the average of middle income level. We were philanthropist at our young age :D. If my memory served, we rented our books for Rp 100.00 (or maybe Rp. 50.00) for couple of days, and we gave discount for our active customer. For the detailed, I have to ask my sister, if she still remember. We had our times and businesss was good, but we were bored easily, and we abandon our noble intention to spread our reading materials.

But good thing has to end somewhere; we moved to our current place. We moved to smaller place, but better ones, because the house is closer to our school and my mother workplace. I like to move to my current house, where my grandparents previously stayed. But it is not about the new place, it's about the process of moving. When the important things have to be packed and sent, books will be in the least important things. Of course, our parents promised to keep the books or sent the books later, but that day never come, until now (I'm married now, and my sister is ..., well no comment). The books were damaged, and I think even the scavengers doesn't want to take books that heavily damaged. It hurts me everytime I remember the books that I once had.

In a new place, we hardly had spaces to keep our books organized. We're still buying books, but we just didn't keep it like we used to be. The books were thrown everywhere, sometimes it was damped, in short the books were easily damaged. We're also occupied with our teenage problems, and other problems that demand our time. Again, books became the least important thing in our life. Therefore, although the books keep flowing, but the stock was not increasing like before.

Now, I'm still buying books like an addict. I'm lucky because my wife is also like to collect books, and she keeps the books in a mint condition. She even scolds me if I'm not careful with her books and also my books. We try too keep our books, although we don't have big spaces, but my wife try to manage it. In my previous office and my desk in UIUC, I have big book shelves, so everything is getting better for books. Yeah, I hope it will continue in the years come.

I'm always planning to have small library in our place.

Why I'm writing this essay? It was because I just bought the same book for the third time, and I'm asking to myself: Why I'm addicted to the books. So, maybe later I will tell you about the book that gave inspiration to this essay.

p.