Books, books and more books

Prompted by my elder son who told us that he would be visiting the Kuala Lumpur International Book Fair at PWTC last weekend, we also follow suit by paying a visit there as well.

Though we didn't meet him there but the thousands of people thronging the place is evidence of the fast changing culture among Malaysians where book reading is concern.

The Book Fair which is still on until the 13th of April is certainly a place to be as you would be able to find all sorts of books, most of them on special discounts.

Several books were "collected" from the Fair, the daughter got a series of Malay adventure books, the son got some classical tale books and the mother, a few more of novels of her favourite writer.

As for me, I didn't get any for myself as the last novel that I bought had hardly move pages and I'm still struggling to actually understand the plot of the story.

True to being a cheapskate, I bought this novel by John le Carre titled Absolute Friends not because I love reading his books but I just can't help buying it as it was being sold for only a Ringgit! I guess they're just clearing up their stocks but after reading 44 pages, I'm still not sure where the story is heading at. I guess I would have no choice but to keep on reading to at least understand who's who in the story!

Incidently I am now an Editorial Committee Member to the Professional body I'm registered with, so I guess I would have to spend more time reading from now on, just to make sure that I can detect at least the basic errors so that they can be corrected before hitting the press.

Our collection of Grolier's "I wonder why" series Back to the Book Fair, I noticed that one of the most aggressive book marketeer at the Fair was none other than Grolier. Their booths were everywhere, near the entrance, in the middle, at the back with its salesmen roaming about hunting for anyone who brought their kids along.

Having had experienced the intimidation by their salesman before, I tried my very best to avoid passing through their booths as I just can't stand their marketing tactics.

I like their books, in fact I have a whole range of them, bought several years ago, out of guilt as the salesman bluntly told us that he was ashamed being a Malay, a community that would rather pay for Astro instead of buying books for their children.

Anyhow, the books that I bought for the kids are well read, all three of them make reference to the books and my youngest child adopts the books as his companion before going to bed.

I guess between the three of them, the youngest has actually read the most of the books.

The other two prefer getting a book one after the other, all books at one go put them off I guess.

Jasni AJ