Welcome to my blog.
I have been collecting books for more than 20 years. They fill the floor to ceiling bookshelves in my home. Over the years, I have amassed a modest but growing collection sourced from all over the world. Whenever I travel to another country, I would make it a point to look for bookstores or secondhand bookshops. I buy from online stores, regular bookshops in malls, used bookshops, book fairs, flea markets.
The objective of this blog is to chronicle my collection, one book at a time. My books are dear to me, not because they have taken a lot of time, money and effort to acquire but mostly because they offer me a form of escapism from the stresses of daily life. Being a dreamer at heart, my books bring me to places and times which are not and will never be a part of my real life.
So, it is in this small part of cyberspace that I intend to document my books, starting perhaps with the ones which are my favourites, books which I tend to re-read and re-visit. Some of them have special personal memories and many of them have excerpts and paragraphs which are profound and meaningful to me. I also wish to share the joy and entertainment and knowledge and hope that others who have not read them will perhaps be inspired to do so.
When people find out that I like to read and collect books, they usually ask what type of books. I find it amusing that most of them assume I'm referring to popular novels from the chick lit, romance and horror genre. I am not insulted by that assumption but to set the record straight, I don't or hardly ever read such books. Initially, I found it difficult to explain what type of books I usually read. In the early years, the term Young Adult was not in use and all books were lumped under Children's Books. So, after drawing more than a few curious looks from people, I stopped saying that I read children's books. Today, I would say that my choices tend to lean towards short stories, children or more popularly called Young Adult these days, fantasy and magic, the classics and stories set during the World War II. I have Asian, British and American writers in my collection. Personally, I favour British writers but that is just because of my familiarity with Britain as I was partly educated there. People have asked me why I do not read popular novels (for Dan Brown however, i will make an exception). It is not because I am a snob. Far from it. (I can't afford to proclaim myself as one because I know so little about books). Well, because life in general is demanding and sometimes stressful, the last thing I want to do is read about neurotic, depressed and maybe mentally ill men and women. No, thank you.
It would be great if you would have any recommendations of new books or reviews/opinions of the books featured here. Feel free to email me at the address below or leave a comment on the blog.
On a final note, this is my personal policy or stance.
No. 1 I do not review books for commercial benefit and neither will I accept such commissions.
No. 2 This is a personal blog and it is not run for financial gain save and except for advertisements by third parties (eg. Adsense, if applicable).
No. 3 All excerpts from books are on "fair use" basis as defined under USA law and "fair dealing" as defined under Australian law.
No. 4 I hope that readers will be motivated to buy the books which I have featured, either traditional hardcopies or e-book versions. I strongly believe in copyright and respecting the written works of others.
No. 5 Anyone who plagiarizes the content in my blog without my permission and publishes it as their own work will have to face the consequences. Should you wish to use original content written by me in your own blog or writing, kindly ask my permission first and I would greatly appreciate credit to this blog via the blog name and address. Sharing via social media like Facebook, Pin Interest, Twitter, etc is exempted from this rule.
The Write Read
Malaysia
Email : wonderofbooks@gmail.com
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