And the chase for books is on! I have now 48 books on my list and January 1st, 2025, my official launch date, is not far away as well. While researching books to add to my list, I already got the feeling that it would be quite difficult to find some. For example, Chicken Kampung by Ravi Veloo. I know that this is a story I will absolutely love. But go find it! Can someone explain to me why I can’t find a single copy of this book on any of the usual platforms in Singapore, yet a library in Ohio, USA, has it in their collection?
Luckily, the National Library of Singapore has a copy in their Lee Kong Chian Reference Library. And who says “reference”, says books you can not loan. So, this is going to be a special treat: spending an entire day in a magical place. A library filled with rare and wonderful books too special for you to take them home. I imagine the books being all excited to be pulled off their shelves and handled with the respect they deserve. Or maybe Chicken Kampung just wants to stay stuck, left alone, and enjoy its solitary retirement. Who knows.
The library is definitely going to be a good place to source some books on my list. I haven’t checked yet, but I am pretty sure they have a big chunk of the books on my list. Which brings me to this question: Why am I so fixated on buying as many of these books as I can, rather than just borrowing them?
The way I normally select my books is by taking my time walking through rack after rack in the library. Pull out one here, another one there, pick up yet another one a library user has left on a table. Or I walk into Popular or Kinokuniya with 10 minutes to spare and see what destiny will throw in my lap. Or I scroll on my phone and let Amazon’s algorithm be the one figuring it out for me. My best finds are the one among the free books people leave at library exchange corners. Like the day I found an entire set of Steinbeck’s works. Heaven.
With this project, things are a little different. There is much less of the serendipity of “just” finding a book. I have my very specific criteria and I am ruthless. Which means cutting out a lot of interesting stories that I would normally dive into in a heartbeat. It is sometimes really frustrating and it feels like a struggle with myself. Could I not just bend the rules for once this time? So, I guess I am channeling that negative energy into one of my other favorite hobbies: chasing a good deal.
And boy, is it challenging. I live in Singapore and want to read by Singaporean authors. But finding these books sometimes feels like I have been dropped into a literary desert. A couple of days ago, I stepped into a Popular bookstore. I had no problem finding a Colleen Hoover, a Stephen King, or a Japanese bestseller. But Singaporean writers? I walked through rows of tables and racks with every imaginable book written by international authors, searching and searching. And then…Then I recognized a title from my list. I got so excited as I imagined rows and rows of Singaporean books waiting for me.
I came back to my senses very soon. There was a single, lonely rack of books by Singaporean authors. And, of course, it only held the most well-known names.
So, I now feel that buying these books, wherever I get them, is not about ‘having’ them, but also supporting Singaporean literature. If we buy more books by Singaporean authors, big stores like Popular and Amazon would have big tables just for Singaporean authors. And I wouldn’t have this sad image of standing in a Singaporean bookstore, staring at a very lonely rack.