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| TOM YAM: VOLUNTEER AT THE BOOK ATTIC FROM APRIL 2008 TO PRESENT |
| Look forward to seeing you at The Book Attic where browsers are always welcome. |
| USED BOOKS NEW FINDS SAVE OUR FORESTS GROW OUR MINDS |
| Auspicious Wish At this very moment, for the peoples and the nations of the earth, may not even the names disease, famine, war, and suffering be heard. Rather may their moral conduct, merit, wealth, and prosperity increase, and may supreme good fortune and wellbeing always arise for them. |
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| USED BOOKS NEW FINDS SAVE OUR FORESTS GROW OUR MINDS |
| Cockloft, 2 Elgin Street, Central, Hong Kong Telephone: +852 2259 3103 香港 中環 伊利近街 2 號 閣樓 |
| I am not one of those natural book lovers who had a love at first sight, out of body experience, the moment they laid hands on a book, soon after toilet training. With the benefit of age and wisdom (!), I realize that my love of books took years of meandering and muddling through the various chores of life. The seed for the love of reading was planted when I was in the midst of typical teenage fun-filled high school years in Hong Kong: football, table tennis, rock and roll music, picnic and of course parties, parties and more parties with the girls from our favorite Catholic schools. Some time in my Form 3 year (or was it Form 4?), the English class assignment included a book titled “The Trumpet Major” written by Thomas Hardy. It was a story set in a coastal English town when Napoleon ruled Europe and was threatening to invade England. The protagonist was secretly in love with his brother’s girlfriend. Although he was aware of his brother’s philandering with other women, he remained loyal to him and kept his feelings to himself. This story of unrequited love ended sadly by his falling with his comrades in the distant battle ground of Europe after joining the English army with the rank of a trumpet major. Was it a premonition in anticipation of my life in years to come that I found the novel so compelling at the tender age of 14? Or was it more of a resonance of my own teenage high school experience at that point in time: the Catholic schoolgirl that never became my girlfriend? I was absorbed in the world of this trumpet major, his struggles, repressed feelings, and resignation. At the time, I thought little of it and went straight back to practice with my school team in table tennis and planning the next party. I should have noticed something since I was interested enough to read the book twice. A few years later in Form 5, I was surprised to receive a best paper award in History. It turned out that I really got carried away in answering an examination question on the condition in Europe after the Austro- Prussian war of 1866. Whatever little I knew of the subject then, and I cannot recall what the hell I wrote, it was good enough to impress the teacher to give me an award. Most of the stuffs that I wrote had been picked up in a reference book anyway. Again, was it a premonition on my later interest in the intrigues of History and world events that shape people, empires and civilization? Those subliminal experiences remained dormant in my subconscious in the decades to come as I labored through too many degrees in engineering and business, and too many positions in the corporate world. But somewhere along the way, I rediscovered the world and joy of reading. Was it those many 16-hour trans-continental flights, or lonely nights in hotels in too many countries during business trips, that pulled me back to the world of books? Or was it those ah ha moments when I marveled at the writing of the likes of Saul Bellow and Truman Capote? The soaring and melancholic oratory in Shakespeare’s play? Or my interest in understanding China during the dying days of the Qing dynasty which led to my interest in the post World War I settlement that impacts the world to this day? I do not know the answers to the above. It does not matter anyway as I lie on the beach of Koh Samui with a beer in one hand, a book in another, and suntan lotion over my body. I now leap into the world with the people created by the author. Or huddle with a good History book and wonder at how the world might have been if events were to have unfolded slightly differently. One of the ‘might have beens’ is what I would have done with my life if I had recognized those inner voices beckoning me to a drum of a different beat back then. On the other hand, I perhaps should just regard those early experiences as a chapter in a book in whose world I stayed in for a fleeting moment only. I slipped out of that world unknowingly.. and now I am back in that world again. In the Book Attic |
January 6th 2012
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