I visit Public Library three times during my five years stay here, the last two visits happened yesterday and two and a half years ago, make it pretty decent math for primary student, and I went there because I had nowhere else to go. It makes me wonder actually, because I frequent bookshop quite often, no as often as I used to, but it takes a fair percentage of my time. Maybe because it’s hard to find the books that I want from library? The books are everywhere in the e-catalog but it’s either on-loan or nonexistent.
I read much, much less than what I used to be, maybe because of computer and reading through monitor make my eyes produce some repellent enzyme with books. It’s true, it’s sometimes unbearable to read those tiny letter although I desperately want to. That’s why I have many unread novel in my rack, one because of that, second because I have quite major preference changes.
So yesterday, to pass sometime waiting for Hubby, I tried to look for the new Asterix, yess, comic book for this old girl, there are few new titles I found in Kinokuniya. I still hesitate to buy them because first, it’s ex, second, original language in English is not as funny as when it’s translated to Indonesian slang. But as I guess, I couldn’t find any in the library, found some old titles but couldn’t locate the real book. So I just hung out in the kids section, bent half of the body because of low rack to look for them times and again, in the process, I found many interesting books. So I kicked off my shoes and parked on the floor.
Children fairy tales, I have never read Little Red Riding Hood or Hans and Gretel before, so I found a short version (or is it that short?) and I read it… oh sweet children classic…MAN, THEY ARE HORRIBLE TERRIBLE SCARY STORIES, FOR CHILDREN?! Why on earth people regard it as sweet and innocent when a kid has to sew up an animal tummy and push an elderly to be cooked alive? I didn’t get it wrong, right? Other version even said that Little Freak who cut up the wolf’s tummy. I have a lot of children book, actually I started late, read children book when I was already a teenager and hm…close to thirty, but at least Enid Bylton’s books teach kids not to scream (which is a bloody great idea), to be honest bla bla and the cruelest thing Hans Christian Anderson did was to make a duck ugly!
So I shoved the classic crazy children book to the rack and found some others. There is a story about four kids who dive to find treasure. Damn it, can’t they leave something for me to do after they occupy all the toys in Toys R Us?
There are few interesting books with nice big fonts for these eyes. Borrowed Mark Twain’s and Pippi Longstocking, few magazines with a lot of picture for more eyes friendly read and would come back for more that I planned to borrow in the future.
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I had plenty of pimples as a kid. One day I fell asleep in the library. When I woke up, a blind man was reading my face.
- Rodney Dangerfield
Mary had a little lamb and the doctor fainted.
- Unknown
I was the kid next door's imaginary friend.
- Emo Philips
Children seldom misquote. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said.
- Unknown
When all else fails, look cute.
- Jim Davis, "Garfield" comic
