Look! Books!

Books really cost a bomb, for the average person, that is. Today I went to the Popular Bookstore in Taiping, just to look around. I like books. Nobody can connect with you like books. No, not even your close of kin. A book in your hand, and you can let your imagination run wild, or sober, as suits the situation in the book. And a bit more!

Moving on, in the bookstore, I let my eyes and hands get busy on the front and back covers of the books in the ‘Non Fiction’ shelves. Just the covers because I am one who thinks that someone is always watching me and I did not want to let them assume that I am reading the books for free. Such a sensitive bloke, that’s me (sic). Even if I open the books, it will be just for a flip second!

The covers always have some minor details about the books and more importantly, the price tag.

The book by Obama – ‘The Audacity of Hope’ – had the tag of RM33.90. Some hope!

Marina Mahathir’s ‘50 Days RantingsByMM’ cost RM19.50. If 50 days of rantings cost so much I wonder how much a whole year’s rantings will cost! (No hard feelings, Marina. Just joking!)

On the other hand, ‘Dr Mahathir’s Selected Letters To World Leaders’ cost a cool RM49.90! Just letters, mind you. What a killing by the publishers! Secrets revealed, perhaps?

A book ‘An Autobiography - M.K. Gandhi’ was also at hand. Poor Gandhi, with his old and haggard face on the cover, was just waiting for RM10.00. A kind and simplistic soul to the end.

Lim Kit Siang’s ‘Time Bombs In Malaysia’ turned out to be one of the bombs all right - RM50.00!

The smiling face of ‘Najib Razak’ will certainly make you smile back at him. The book cost just RM19.90, quite low for a Prime Minister.

On the contrary, ‘Michelle Obama’ with her face in a charming grin on the book cover of her ‘biography by Liza Mundy’, may make you grin back, but only for a short while, up to the time you see the price tag of RM49.50.

Sorry, folks. I did not buy any of those, what with me being just an average person. But don’t you worry. Average persons do have a rage to get what they want, sometime or other. Ha! Ha! I am coming back to get Gandhi and Najib first.

I just quietly slipped out of the place. On the way out, my eyes dropped on the evergreen Reader’s Digest. It costs RM15.00 now. It cost only RM1.20 when I was schooling! Oh, well, book-price and tide waits for no man!