It was a busy day. I was running into a train just before it left the station. After calmed myself down, I reached into my bag and opened a half-read novel. I couldn’t help but feel people staring at me strangely for doing this relatively humdrum thing. I was tempted to tell them, ” Hey dude, I’m just reading, everyone, nothing to see here.”

Come to think of it, though, reading books is probably not the most common activity that one can be seen doing in public setting in Indonesia. Office employees might still be found perusing newspaper on their way to work or ladies at a beauty salon will be giving instruction to their hairdressers while holding women’s magazines. But why not books?

One of the reasons I mostly heard is the lack of time. Yes, our lives have become more fast-paced and busy now, but this fact shouldn’t avoid you from going to a bookstore and picking an enticing book to read. Busy at work the whole day? You can still read at night one chapter at a time, and before you know it, you will finish a thick memoir.

Meanwhile, some other people seem to prefer other form of media to consume, from the aforementioned, newspaper and magazines to television and internet. They can provide you with faster and more practical information, but there are several features that are not provided by the consumption of such media, especially when you compare them with fictional books. According to this Harvard Business Review article, reading novels can give you various benefits, such as making one better in understanding human emotion.

There is also one of the modern symptoms that I find pervasive: most of us are tethered to our mobile gadgets nowadays and get addicted to social networking sites. Scrolling through your Instagram feed or watching your friend’s instastories one by one, sounds more tempting than having to leaf through hundreds of pages. Without notice, you have spent 2 hours with your phone on your hand. Worse when you stop those activities due to lack of battery.

Probably this is also why some Indonesians are enamored by the concept of giving a lecture through the caption or short video on Instagram or other platforms- where a user will explain about a certain object- be it a social phenomenon, current affairs, or even scientific object. But at its best, the information you get from social networking sites can only enrich your mind so far because everything is being discussed on a superficial level. Meanwhile with books, you can understand a subject matter in a more detailed and thorough manner.

Going all the way to the roots I do believe the educational system we have in our country can take the blame to a certain extent on why most Indonesians are not keen of reading books. I was educated in public school from elementary to high school, and as far as I can remember, I was rarely assigned to read books- in this case, literature- for my English and Bahasa Indonesia courses. Even though my fellow friends and I sometimes encountered passages from famous Indonesian author’s literary works in our textbooks, our teacher never pushed us to dig deeper and read.  As a result, most students’ understanding about literature was insufficient, boring and they ended up not appreciating books. No wonder we have no idea who Pramoedya Ananta Toer is, what makes he has appreciated in literature study, or had no chance to learn from Soe Hok Gie’s critical mind or Nietzsche with his masterpiece- Zarathustra. I know they all and get drunk with their works when I have become a student college. As surrounded by friends that love to read literature books, sooner I have changed my mindset- from the beginning my thought  literature is boring, become interesting. Better late than never. Really grateful.

Thankfully, I was raised in a book-friendly home. I was one of those kids who prefer to get a gift of books than toys- which turns me into a bibliophile-slash-book-hoader today. Even if your school never gave you an assignment to read “The Alchemist”, you can read it by yourself and find out where the discovery truly located. Because in its very essence, reading is about self-actualization and making yourself more knowledgeable.

If you are now intrigued to read more, what to do? Go to a bookstore is the most obvious thing to do. And yet I still lament the selection in some Indonesian bookstores. If you pay a visit to stores like Gramedia, the best-seller section is stacked with Indonesian books whose topics make me furious most of the time: self-help motivations, tips on how to get rich fast. No worries, though, because Indonesia still has a troupe excellent writers, such as Dewi “Dee” Lestari and Ayu Utami whose novels are critically acclaimed.

And if you think that book prices are getting more expensive nowadays, there are always the libraries. Granted, you can’t easily find it in every corner of Jakarta, but there are a number of well-stocked and comfortable libraries you can visit here, including the Freedom Library in Menteng and Cikini. Nevertheless, I am really thankful because now there are several (I said several, because the number is not as much as food stalls at each corner of the city) independent bookstores like Post Bookshop, a tiny but comfy (can be felt from the photos) bookstore at Pasar Santa upper floor. To be honest, I haven’t gone there though it has been my wishlist since 2016. Planning to go there next Sunday, wanna join? 🙂

Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something, learnt something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter and also gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicated itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is a bliss.

During my insomniac and decided to write this. Enjoy! Please do leave any comment, cause I really wanna know your thoughts about this topic.

Palmerah, Jan 9th 2018