Away From The Keyboard

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.” 

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Besides toys, my father used to buy me books too when I was a young child though I honestly can’t remember when I actually started reading. When I was growing up, besides television and playing outside with childhood friends, the other hobbies that were available to us from the Generation X was reading books and comics. My earlier novels were probably some translated to Malay novels and one book that I remember reading was the story about two brothers joining a ship that hunted whales. Can’t remember what’s the actual title of the book but the heroes were Hal and Roger Hunt.

During my boarding school days I was again introduce to book reading especially from my English class where our teacher gives us a book at the start of the week to read and then at the end of the week to summarize about what we have been reading. The books were given at random though I found out that I’m more interested in adventure type of books especially those set in historical period so I’m very much at that time finding myself enjoying the books by Alexandre Dumas like The Count of Monte Christo, The Three Musketeers and The Man in the Iron Mask.

Photo credit: Google Images

I was also at that time introduced to Dickens and even Shakespeare (though I was not reading his actual plays) plus many other novels, both in Malay and English that I can get my hand of from the school library. One of the books that I still remember is called Isabella, a Malay translation (which I confess I do not know the original author or the original language) is about a story base on Islamic Spain setting about the daughter of a priest who became a Muslim and that book actually started my interest in comparative religious studies.

Other Malay language books that I was reading that time were from renowned Malay writers like Arena Wati, Usman Awang and  A. Samad Said. While my reading list are diverse, my interest lies in historical settings so Malay novels like Salina and Panglima Awang are those that really sparked my interest.

During the time I was working in a resort many years ago, my source of books at that time were those that were left by the hotel guests at the end of their stay and I’m very grateful since I can’t even remember if there’s a bookstore there that sells type of books that I like to read. I’ve got quite a lot of large collection that time though I had to leave most when I moved to KL.

Photo credit: Google Images

While I very much like history, I don’t really like to read the academic type history books so my interest is mostly historical fictions like The Eagle Series by Simon Scarrow and also The Warlord Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell. The books that I have read (and many times re-reading them) are what helped shape my interest and awareness of the real work and you can find that relation on my other blog called The Keyboard Warrior. 

The books that I have read also in many ways indirectly contributed towards the games that I like to play whenever I have the free times which I am also posting on another blog called The Keyboard Gamer.

With this blog I’m going to write my experiences, if not actual reviews regarding the books that I have in my possession especially those I enjoyed reading them again and again. After all, we must not always stay in front of the keyboard all the time!