I like reading, love it. Through books I learn lots of things and travel to many places in the world. If you ask me what gift that I will always welcome on my birthday I will say BOOKS and no other.
One of my family recreation agenda every month is to a bookstore with my kids. In this way I can teach them to love books, to enjoy reading as much as I enjoy it myself. And it seems to work because my kids are always looking forward to our monthly trip to a bookstore, and recently my youngest son won’t sleep at night before I read him a book.

Last week my eldest son came to me with an idea that he would like to have his own Taman Bacaan where his friends can read his collection of books for free. He even made some flyers advertising his taman bacaan to be sent to all his friends’ houses.

I was ecstatic and tried everything that I could to help my son making his idea come true. We collected all his books; listed and numbered them. Put them in some boxes. I even helped him put some picture to the flyers to make them look nicer. The next morning, reading his bike, my son delivered the flyers to all his friends’ house around our neighborhood. And in the afternoon, his Taman Bacaan was open for the first time. I was so proud of my son, he was only eight years old yet he had such a brilliant idea. His objective was very simple; he wanted to share his books with his friends.

It seems very ironic to the fact of what we had from our last FGDs on youth; most of the respondents (male and female aged 19 - 25 years old) admitted they did not like reading, even reading a magazine or a newspaper, they preferred to have internet instead for chatting with their friends. Will in the future books be extinct, replaced by internet? A point to ponder… (eky)

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