Books, books, and more books.
Books have been around since mankind learned the arts of writing and documentation. It's nearly as old as the wheel, yet wiser. It brought civilizations to its glory, and to its ruin. People hailed its contents as a message of divinity, as well as expressing their disgust upon it with global protests. Books move, books made, and books endured, yet their overall base ingredients remain unchanged: just papers and text. Throughout one's lifetime, it's not unusual to grow fondly with books as part of your livelyhood from cradle to grave.
I can't really remember much of when I started reading, though like most children, I was introduced to books when I sat on my parent's lap around the age of 3 or 4, with fairytale favourites like Cinderella, Robin Hood, The Prince and The Pauper and others being inadvertently spoken to my pretend-to-be listening, still dumbfounded state of young, innocent mind. If I'm not mistaken, it was around the age of 5 or 6 that I started reading fairytales on my own. Again, as will most children, this is also the start of my manga-reading habits with Doraemon as the ice-breaker.
I always favour books that are imaginative, colourful and expressive. Born a Pisces, it's no surprise why I often indulge unhealthily in reading mangas and comic books for hours, which does take its toll somewhat on my studies in secondary school. I never really gotten into more technical, serious reading materials until after my SPM. At that time, I wanted to expand my knowledge about the military and firearms, another personal interest of mine since childhood. During the long post-SPM holiday, hundreds of Ringgit in my monthly allowance went up in smoke, and within three months, I have assembled myself a sizeable collection of military books, from thorough information on special forces to comprehensive books on small arms. The start of my university years also marked the beginning of my foray into classic literature, something that I have ignored throughout my lifetime, which I soon began to regret. It took only a few hours of reading and I instantly got hooked to Edgar Allan Poe. Never had any writer able to express the profound sense of intrigue, mystery and darkness like Allan Poe would.
I really love books. If some gluteus maximus forehead dictator resembling a cross between Hitler and Elton John would imprison me in a high security detention camp for reasons unknown (other than beating him in a game of hide-and-seek), I'd surely take The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks.
I'm not necessarily in it for that nerdy teenage fantasy of being the only tough, manly, handsome survivor left in the midst of the walking dead, arming himself with an arsenal of shotgun and a chainsaw on each hand, but if you factor in the aforementioned hell-bent crazed dictator, he might as well start some unethical research on biological weapons, unambiguously call it the G-Virus, purposefully left the decontamination and safety procedure relatively slipshod and let it spread to a nearby populated area or something like that.
While the rest of the population started panties-on-head panicking, I'll be awesomely waltzing through armies of the undead spouting cheesy one-liners, solving cryptic puzzles and essentially unlocking every locked doors like the master of unlocking that is me in the godforsaken mansion. Which will it be: the 'sunset' ending or the 'helicopter rescue' ending?
Of course, that is to assume if there is such a thing as tolerance in fascism. More realistically, Elton Hitler will surely bind my hand with a knot made out of frozen gay, sandwiched my head onto one of the legs of his piano and started playing The Circle of Life in a non-stop 36 hour marathon made even worse with a bald, pregnant Britney Spears as the duet vocalist. And no books for me! Back to your cage, you monkey!
Being deprived of accessible knowledge to me is like being deprived the rights to use the john. You may hold it in for as long as you want only to delay the inevitable once kidney stones and painful burning sensation kicks in. It's utterly unbearable. It makes me wanna stand up and walk around my cell hoping fatigue would calm me down, but I simply can't when I doze off to dream all night long about opening a book and reading. So there you have it, Elton Hitler has won The Wheel of Fortune! He has completely annihilated my will to live and all hopes for a rescue.
Then, by divine intervention or pure coincidence, ninjas armed with dreadfully hated Add Maths textbook came crashing from the window and gave Elton Hitler much needed education on the effects of velocity x trajectory applied on both hemispheres of the cranium. The ninjas swiftly proceeded to tutoring "Bald Eagle" Britney and the rest of the late Elton Hitler's remaining henchmen on the fine etiquettes of meeting the maker. It was only a matter of time before the fist of Zeus crashed onto earth and life as we know it ends.
So where's the ending punchline? Nothing really. I fell asleep after reading through some bizarre story I found on the Internet about crossing to the alternate dimension after midnight. Since you happen to come past this essay by chance, let me ask you a question: do you like books?
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