I dedicate this column to all the children and especially teenagers who might be reading this magazine. I want these young people to hear a defence of the reading habit when they weigh their options on what to do with their free time. Should they indeed pick up a book, play a computer game, SMS with half the world, watch TV, hang out at the mall, plan a party including the booze and sex?

Johan Jaaffar wrote a compellingly poignant piece in one of his recent “Point Blank” columns in the New Straits Times. Mr. Jaaffar is one of the best-known journalists for many decades in Malaysia. He titled his piece “Why the book industry needs Oprah” and in it he lamented the dearth of the reading habit for its own value.

I was a University Adjunct (Associate) Professor and then K-12 grade School Librarian in the United States before coming to Asia. The almost yearly relocations to nudge my husband’s career up the ladder resulted in me never gaining that all-important tenure.

As many of my readers, friends, and business associates also know, I have been painfully disabled for six years. A nightmare of double scoliosis in its last stages of degeneration needing an urgent surgery plagues me without let up with the unremitting pain. They also know that five years ago, I was forced out of our home and back to the United States by a husband who thought I would never resurface. Six frantic months later, I did.

Five years on and my situation remains pretty bleak. I did take him to court here. From March 2000, still trapped, penniless, in the US, I hired my lawyer. A wonderful, very dear, very wise woman, Datin Paduka Puan Zaitoon Othman became my friend, my counsellor, my guide, and my first genuine confidante. I won my case on 29 September 2003. He then lost his job, and I filed for a rarely granted Exparte Order to keep him in Malaysia until he complied with the Court Order, which had ordered him to return some of my assets. It was granted 17 November 2003. However, he left in spite of it. On 22 March 2005, he was charged with Contempt of Court and issued a warrant for his arrest. He is now a General Manager for a large hotel in Jakarta. I continue to try to use the legal system for redress.

I remain today without one cent in the bank, no property, no moveable, immoveable, or liquid assets, no transport, and no insurance. I pay RM2000 a month for my medicines, without which I would not be able to get out of bed, get myself ready to go to the office, nor endure the hours at work. Without my boss, and my ‘family’ staff I would not be here at all. It took me almost four years before I could finally stop asking my boss, Andy, for advances so that I could buy food and those all-important meds. I also have my now 18-year-old son with me, of whom I am very proud. However, even his spending money comes, not from his financially secure father, but from me.

Johan wrote, “If you read 20 titles a year and your neighbour finds reading a wasteful vocation, ask yourself, ‘Are you better off than him or her?’ There is no ‘economic value’ to reading, whether you like it or not.” I have a different take on the economic value of reading. Let’s say I was a business that invested a huge amount of time in reading, expecting to get a financial payoff in commensurate terms. Myself is the alluded to business, my metaphor as it were, and I invested a huge (since I was four years old) amount of time in reading. My economic payoff has been tangible. Firstly, it was survival. Second, a standard of living that is now above the local average. Third, regaining the self-respect, confidence, and dignity I lost during my marriage.

If I had not been a reader, I would never have been able to make my living as a writer, since I am convinced that my talent for writing rests solely and squarely on my vociferous habit of reading throughout my life. Reading has given me the ability to write with wide scope and depth on a diverse range of topics. Growing up in a family of ten children, there was little money to buy books, so I pretty much read out the entire public library, no matter the subject. Reading was my escape and my teacher. It turned out to be the defining key to my destiny. When I returned to KL in July of 2000, I had to somehow earn money right away and writing freelance articles was the only way I could start surviving since I had no work permit along with ‘no nothing.’ I did, however, have some superior people in my life, such as Nora Marzuki, co-founder of this magazine, who offered me office space and the use of a computer so that I could try the freelance thing.

Whenever my husband would ‘catch’ me reading a book or newspaper, he would say something like, “How much money have you ever made from reading?” In other words, shouldn’t I be mopping the floor or painting the house instead of being a lazy, slothful person? During the first few years of our marriage, I thought he was just acting ‘spoiled’ and petulant, wanting my attention, and jealous of my time spent lost in the written word. But soon I realised he really meant just what he was saying. He was not a reader. Every time I would visit one of his relatives, including his mother and brother, there was never a single book in the house, so you can draw your own conclusions as to why he wasn’t.

To paraphrase Johan, I read sheerly for the pleasure it gives, whether a historical novel or a book on physics. I just love getting myself lost in a book and couldn’t imagine my life without this pleasure. Brought up as a strict Catholic in convent schools, I even used to thank God for giving me this gift – this genuine love of reading, because I knew most people did not possess it.

I was, of course, aware that reading was one of the major reasons I was always at the top of the academic heap, and why learning new things came so easily to me. When I applied for acceptance into one of the toughest Law Schools in the US, The Boston College School of Law, like all candidates I had to take the LSAT exam that consisted of questions of logical thinking and the ability to rationally reason. Reading had formed my intellect, and it showed – I scored in the top 5-percent of the candidates. In other words, I had not been just picking up random trivia, but was learning how to form opinions, how to think out situations, even most basically how to think. To derive intense pleasure at the same time was just a bonus. 

Ironically, it was my husband’s key to success, too. All the letters, résumés, correspondences I wrote for him surely did him well.

So, as I ponder my next step, to compel him to comply with the Court Order that would restore at least some of my assets (which mysteriously all seemed to have dropped my name off them), I will keep on reading, anything and everything. I will be comforted, inspired perhaps, and I will feel connected to another person’s story for a while and be able to forget my own.

“How much money has reading ever made for me?” It’s done better than to make me money. It’s sustained me in my life, the benefits I have gained from reading can never be taken away as were all my material possessions and money on that terrible day in February of 2000; it has raised and deeply enhanced the quality of my life and it has made me a happier person. Aren’t those the things that money is supposed to do?

Thanks to Johan Jaaffar for his permission to use his name and reference his article.

Source: The Expat September 2005, article by Marybeth Ramey
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This article has been edited for ExpatGoMalaysia.com