~ Life is like a boat ~

On Places where Books and Printed Matters are Stored

Believe it or not -- I'd just started visiting libraries when I was in the lower secondary school.

This may sound too simple to be true for such a book-lover. The point is, when I was younger, there weren't any real libraries in the neighborhood. The so-called school library in the elementary school (upcountry) wasn't that different from another ordinary class -- only without rows of worn-out wooden table sets -- with shelves full of Aesop's fables and old textbooks. While the public library, which was sorta accidentally located nearby, owned a small collection of novels, Thai classical literatures and children's books. Well, that's all I can remember about them. So, it's not that exaggerated to say howvery excited this provincial girl was upon seeing the real library in which books are neatly classified into sections, newspapers and magazines in a corner, foreign books in a private part and, to my dearest surprise, a photocopier! More importantly, there're tables and chairs so that we didn't need to wrorry our bottoms on the cold wooden floor or certain flowery grease-mats. And, most importantly, it's an air-conditioned place!!

And there began my reading addiction.

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Secondary School Library

My secondary school [lower + upper] was an all girls' one located near an old Rama IV temple in the Bangrak area. Its small library consisted of an incredible number of books. ...Although more than half of the collection were considered quite rotten, with smelly yellowish pages and ready to be torn at a touch. That's too good for me, anyway. There was a special section for foreign books as well. However, being special here doesn't mean having rare pieces; but because it was the most traquil part in the whole place -- which was indeed suitable for a nap. [Just kidding~!]

I hadn't had read that many books back then. Most of the stuff I took were some extra texts, those needed for Thai and social study assignments, and some entertainment like magazines or newspapers, and some translated juvenile books. Also, I started to read English encyclopaedia when in the 2nd or 3rd year at school, although the only things I understood well were captions and pictures, not the real texts. Very well, how'd you expect an ordinary lower secondary schoolgirl to fluently understand those pages overflooded with tinest alien alphabets, huh?

Discovery Time

Khun Prapatsorn Sevikul : a diplomat and novelist.

His novels are usually based on Thai or foreign history + backgrounds. My favourites include Time in the Bottle, Power, Shiek and Depending on the Weather. Says, Depending on the Weather made me crazy about Turkey and its history for a great while. Even nowaday, Hagia Sofia is still one of my travelling destinations. [Were I to have a chance...] Time in the Bottle depicted the lives of teenagers some time in the middle of 1970s. I'd never been aware of the time set until I was in the 2nd year in the University. [Still, I don't really understand why the scriptwriter chose to insert the quarrel-in-front-of-a-factory for the October 1976 incident -- a totally irrelevant replacement, I daresay -- when being dramatised for a local TV station. Fairly speaking, it must be utterly difficult to find some familiar events at the time and no one would really care about it, anyway.]

The Extraordinary Narration on the History of the French Revolution by Khun Charan Dittha-apichai

I started reading this 2-vol set of books in M. 4 [1st year in the upper secondary school], partially because French was my major subject and it wasn't that bad to learn more about its history outside the class. It took me about 3 or 4 years to buy the real copies. But, until now, I'm not really sure if I've actually finished them, for it's too tempting to fall asleep to read it through. I need to divide & read -- literally, read only what I feel like to; such as Le Tiers Etat, Bastille or Robespierre. That's why I've no idea if I've finish reading them!

The Neverending Story [Die unendliche Geschichte] by Michael Ende

Maybe, this was my earliest book with the philosophical theme -- an adventurous story of a loser-turned-hero in an imaginary realm named Fantasia. It taught me that the cruelest crime a person can make is to forget.

The English Language Department's Library

A small room next to the teachers' louge -- too small to call it a library, maybe a tidy storage room for outside reading books seems more suitable. So, it was actually a heaven ffor those who didn't fancy buying extra English readings. Perhaps they considered it unnecessary to have some more extra copies of those already in the main library.

The French Language Department's Library

A sub-library for those taking French as the second foreign language in the upper years. It was a section in teachers' louge where we were allowed to borrow dictionaries, lexicons, practice books, ver conjugation cards or magazines. Well, all en francais, if you fancy.

Discovery Time

Le Petit Larousse : a tres bon marche French dictionary + compact encyclopaedia, full of references and illustrations/maps. The price [roughly 10 years ago] was surprising cheaper than the Oxford Advanced Learners' Dictionary one.

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The National Library

To guarantee your tough reading habit, one's got to visit the National Library. Or you aren't the real readers. [Attempt to joke proven failure...]

The truth is, everyone in school or university must got to the National Library -- despite those century-old books, strict regulations or the very rare chance of finding what one wanted... or even the seeminly eternal queue at the photocopy corner, the National Library is our final sanctuary.

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The British Council Library @ Siam Square

A compact library full of learning resources such as books [dictionaries, textbooks, guide books, academic stuff, novels, extra-reading supplies], multimedia stuff [VDOs, CDs, tapes] and leaflets -- of course, they must be (a) written by the English, (b) information concerning the UK, (c) kinda extra reading for those taking BC courses, and (d) in English. But to borrow them home, I needed to sacrifice a whole weekly budget for its annual membership fee.

Discovery Time

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

To me, this is the most romantic story ever read. The book contains complicated love and hatred of a noble's daughter and a lower-class man in the Victorian era. It is full of puzzles and strange vocabulary. Says, it was too difficult for this normal schoolgirl to read it though, but I simply ignored the dictionary and crammed it up. [Not good...] So to say, it's my favourite despite having no real understanding of the whole text. And, well, mysteries make Wuthering Heights so appealing to me.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

A novel by the oldest sister of the Bronte clan. It's a love story of one ordinary woman and a rich weird man in a mysterious country-side resident. An inspiration for a Thai soap: Janejira's Only Love.

Restoration

Love, betrayal and adulteries -- that's all this book is about. An all ordinary stuff that is called Restoration because the writer chose Charles II period as its background.

(End of Part I)