Memories of A School Library

Malaysian secondary school libraries are well-known for many things, most of them not book-related (Haw, haw). But having a decent English section is usually not one of them.

Although, I wouldn’t say it’s particularly anybody’s fault, funding for these things are not comparable to developed countries.

In my secondary school, the English section was decidedly small, most of it made up of books that hadn’t been checked out in years. Even by me.

But as I recalled back the other day, there were quite a few books that I have found in that steaming hot library that sticks in my mind. One of them was The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. At the time when I read it, I simply thought it was a good yarn, without any prior knowledge of who the author was or if the story was anything more than it was.

A few years later, when I was in uni during my study break just before the finals, there was this one year I decided not to go home during the one week like most of my classmates. I was on a freaking tight budget then (heck, some things don’t change) so I thought I’d stay on campus and save on the express bus fare. Just so happen the huge campus library just received a new batch of reprinted novels from selected authors, and to my surprise, The Chrysalids was one of them.

So that afternoon in the freezing 4th floor of the library (see the contrast to the earlier library…?) instead of cramming for my finals, I sat down and finished the book, and experiencing a wider understanding to Wyndham’s beautiful allegory and social observations of society.

The next day, instead of studying again, I read Lost Horizon by James Hilton - another book I read earlier from my school library...