JP/Ricky YudhistiraNovelist Ayu Utami has been a fan of books since she was little
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.
'I 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.
'Therefore, 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. 'All 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.
'I 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. 'When 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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