people whom you intend to read someday but never do

like Roland Barthes (whose biography you bought for three dollars remain tucked underneath your closet) or Goenawan Muhammad (whose Catatan Pinggiran remain inaccessible to you because you haven’t been to Indonesia – somewhere you’ve been wanting to go to for the past three years). Sterne. Cervantes. Dante. Thackaray. You ask yourself the intention behind reading these things, as you pile up more books at your bookshelf, trying to stow them away buried, or try to give them away never to see them again. it is not as if you can even explain to anyone any of the books, because you’ve never been asked to, or you’ve never been around a social circle that reads the same things that you do, or because you simply see no point in talking about it, except when you tug home a few books home or the occasional classic movies from the alumni bookshop or the library, only to be commented by your housemate

‘beli lagi?’
‘pinjam lagi?’
‘yang dulu tu dah habis baca ke?’
‘murakami lagi?’

that gives you a sort of reminder how much you have borrowed/bought and how little is read.

but why the need to read exactly?

the question remains unsolved.