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Bookworm: Ayu Utami: Reading for Writing

JP/Ricky YudhistiraNovelist Ayu Utami has been a fan of books since she was little

Ika Krismantari (The Jakarta Post)
Mon, June 8, 2015

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Bookworm: Ayu Utami: Reading for Writing

JP/Ricky Yudhistira

Novelist Ayu Utami has been a fan of books since she was little. Unfortunately, the reading material available at her home was not enough to quench her thirst for words.

'€œI come from a middle-class family; we are not like those families who like to read and have a lot of books at home,'€ she told The Jakarta Post recently.

'€œTherefore, I turned to the Bible as a source of engrossing stories,'€ she said.

Famed for her breakthrough 1998 novel Saman, the author explained that the Bible was one of her work'€™s major inspirations. '€œAll kind of writings are there from prose and poetry to essays,'€ she said.

When it comes to her reading habit, Ayu said she read everything.

'€œI like reading novels. I like to finish them in one reading. But for other books, like philosophy or reference works for my books, I like to read them simultaneously,'€ she said.

Despite her love of reading, she admitted that she sometimes wished she was still a young reader. '€œWhen you'€™re little, you can really get into the stories. I cannot do that anymore. There is always distance between me and my reading, because I have become too rational,'€ she said.

Ferdinand de Saussure'€™s '€˜Introduction to General Linguistics'€™ (Indonesian version).


When I was in college I didn'€™t find the teaching materials interesting. But one day, one of my lecturers brought this book that had been translated into Indonesian.

When I read it, I was so excited. The book is very theoretical but it has changed my view on language. The book taught me that language is a sign.

Tintin

I find the Tintin comics smart, funny and entertaining reading.

I read the comics for the first time when I was in fourth grade. The books inspired me to become a journalist.

What I learned from the author is that you have to create suspense on every page; you can'€™t wait until the last page.

Holy Bible

I began to read the Bible when I was little and found so many interesting stories in it. When I read alone, I sometime discovered stories that had not been told in church. It was so thrilling for me. I found so many weird and amazing stories, from the erotic to the macabre. I didn'€™t read the Bible as scripture but as literature. That was why I read the Bible in the toilet. Every time I went to the toilet, I took the Bible with me and read it there.system and influenced how I think about language. After reading it, I became a Saussureian, a writer with a structural approach.

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