Book is The Window to The World

Book is really the window to the world. Whatever kind it is. Before, my teachers in school ALWAYS said that, but I didn't really get that. But now I'm reading a Scandinavian crime novel translated into English, and I have learned quite a few about Australia. Who would have thought eh? Surely I haven't cross checked all those information, but they can't all be 100% wrong I think. Did you know that the story of how the world was created in Aboriginal culture has a lot of striking similarities to Christians/Catholics? It's really interesting considering Australia was not touched until 1800s when the first settlement came (I don't remember the exact year, so please don't quote me on this). I learned that in The Bat. And books do take you to places you've never been. You involuntarily imagine all those places described in the books don't you?

Luckily my mum and dad are fans of books too. Every Sunday afternoon when we were small, my parents would take my siblings and I to bookstores, supermarkets or shopping malls. Most of those Sunday included bookstores. And every time we went to bookstore, they allowed us to pick 1 book to buy. WHATEVER it is. They really are not discriminative towards books. I could buy story books, novels, or comics. Textbooks are on different genre. If we need a textbook, we were still allowed to pick another book. AND, if even one of us didn't pick one, my dad would say, "There are so many books here, really, there isn't one that's good??" Hahaha... Missed that time a lot. When life was so simple.

I was lucky yes to have supportive parents like that. I remember one day I took my comic to school, and this friend borrowed and read it during breaks. She hadn't finished it, so I told her she could take it home. She said no without thinking. She said, she's afraid her parents would find out. They didn't like comics. Last time they found her reading a comic at home, his dad took it off her hand and tore the whole book to shreds. That comic was her friend's.

I asked my mum after that, why was she not like that? Why did she let us buy and read so many books? Most of them surely weren't textbooks. She said, books give you knowledge. You learn about things in books. Don't you think? I thought and said yeah it's true, I could write my essay last week because I have read so much, so I knew how to structure it. Even as a little girl, I realized what good thing could come out of it.

I have to credit my English to novels and comic books too. Comics helped my speaking when I just arrived in Sydney. I even told my dad to read comics to improve his spoken English. Comics language is casual, the way people normally converse in real life. So it does teach you how you ask questions and what vocabs to use in daily conversation. Novels on the other hand, help with my written English and vocabulary. I surely have to credit books for all the posts on my blog :)

I wished I can tell my friend's dad how useful non-textbooks are. His idea was just plain wrong.