I’ve always wanted to open a bookstore. I remember dreaming of this far back in highschool, when Leana and I would be talking of books and personal libraries, a room lined with shelves of books. When I moved to MRSM, I remember that every time I frequent Kota Bharu, just for the bus turns to the junction where all buses stop (just next to Syarikat Muda Othman’s bookstore), on the main road where you can see the KB Mall smack in the middle of it, there’s a little shop on the left, with a brown signboard BOOK CAFE. I never went there of course during those two years, because it was inaccessible (so my 15 year old self says) by foot. Later in those years only did I get the courage to roam around the city beyond the usual Pantai Timur, Mydin supermarkets, KFCs that the ordinary students on a day out would go to, into the Musuems, my aunt’s pharmacy, the big bookstore near the old pasar, to the nearly deserted DPB bookstore amidst the jewelry shops. But I never went to that shop, and I wonder if it’s still there. The sorrows of young Maisarah.
When I moved to do my foundation for a year, I think I didn’t read much (I can only remember reading Les Miserables, and Russian Short Stories). The bookshops in Alor Setar were either unimpressive or scarce, run by big chain. I bought Trainspotting in Penang.I think there was a public library behind the mall, packed with students and children, which left me with an impression that libraries too, should be accessible to the public (contrast this with the National Library,for example, that I visited with my father in Form 3. Barren.
Back in Gombak, there was Kinokuniya in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, that I would frequent almost every Friday on the way back to Bangi. The Big Bad Woolf sales. Hm, Book Xcess. Saba’ Islamic Media. Borders, where I got my first copy of Milan Kundera. Those events at the Annexe, with all those alternative books. So there I was, fairly happy with the selections that I could purchase, but nevertheless felt everything rather impersonal.
perkaraperkara 