WE all have our vices, a weakness of character that, as amatter of course, consumes us. It preoccupies our every thought. It isolates us, it alienates us, until eventually, it leaves us prostrate and penniless.

As for me, my idiosyncrasies do not lie in such everyday criminal activities as prostitution, pornography or drugs. I cannot afford such extravagances.

I do not smoke. I do not drink excessively. I do not indulge in opiates of any kind. Regardless of how romantic the notion.

No, my foibles lie elsewhere. And while my idée fixe may not be as physically or as spiritually deleterious, it is nevertheless, all-consuming.

Even its origins were dishonourable.

Like most children, I firmly believed that going out to the shops always meant coming back home with something. Chocolates, sweets, something plastic and shiny from near the checkout, and on very good days, maybe even a Transformer.

I could never understand why parents would take you to the shops and then not buy you anything. Why would they expose you to aisle after aisle of beauty and wonder, of carefully and colourfully packaged things — such wondrous things — only to say no, only to leave you kicking and screaming on the floor? Why would they always ask, and disapprovingly, “now, why do you need that?” How was I supposed to know? I was 6 and the crazy colours on the box had overloaded all of my senses. I could smell the bright pinks. I could taste the blues. Iwanted it. I didn’t know what it was, but I was sure it was nothing short of amazing.

I learned very quickly, and at very young an age, that my demands for junk food and toys and pointless pretty thingswould almost always elicit a “no”.

Books, on the other hand, were something else entirely. There was never any question when it came to books. I could buy as many as Iwanted, as often as I wanted. They were just as colourful, every bit as beautiful, but more importantly, I always came home with something. Books were my new toys.

And what began as merely the material cravings of a child, very quickly developed into an obsession that now pervades every aspect of my life.

It has led me to live a life of relative reclusion, my days and nights spent in a rather small room surrounded by my thousands of beautiful books, hoping that by being in such august company, some of itmay rub off. And when I’m not knee-deep in my own books, you can usually find me up to my neck in a bookstore somewhere, slowly perusing its shelves, running my hands over those pristine spines, losingmyself in their rich, inky, redolence.

Yo u ’ll often find me hovering over the “C” shelves, wondering if it is mere coincidence that my favourites, Cervantes and Chabon, conveniently find themselves next to one another. It is indicative of the constant battle that I wage within myself on deciding what to read. On trying to balance the classical with the contemporary.

It is an addiction that has left me impoverished, every last sen gone, as evidenced by the constant arrival of parcels from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, AbeBooks and McSweeney’s.

It has made me impatient and I am eternally grateful for the phenomenon that is the pre-order and priority shipping.

My preoccupation with the written word has made me promiscuous; a complete and utter whore when it comes to all things bound between covers. No genre escapes my wanton desires. I am utterly indiscriminate in what I read and I find joy in the most unusual of places.

Recently, I found such joy in Preeta Samarasan’s Evening is the Whole D ay . A novel I had hastily purchased, at Heathrow Airport, while rushing to my departure gate. I knew nothing about it except that it had a pretty cover — orange and yellow and green and turquoise — I could not help but want it. It was only later, once I had settled comfortably into my seat, safely buckled in, when I realised that it was, in fact, written by a Malaysian.

Now I don’t know about you, but each time I pick up something by a Malaysian author, I am both excited and apprehensive. I hope for the best but expect the worst. Because when yo u ’ve had your heart broken as many a time as I have, you eventually learn to be a little cautious.

A caution that proved to be entirely unnecessary when it came to Samarasan’s effort. I finished it in one sitting.

Her rich and beautiful prose had me enthralled for most of the 13 hours that it took for me to get home.

And I felt somewhat closer in my unending search for the Great Malaysian Novel.

But what about the Great Malaysian Novelist? I was looking at the biographies of some of our authors who have recently received wide and critical acclaim only to discover that they live in France, Glasgow, London and Cape Town. I began towonder why they seemed to be everywhere else. To be anywhere but here.

Maybe it’s because what they do is so under-appreciated over here.

Maybe it’s because they had to leave the suffocating surroundings of their youth to be able to produce something so deep and unclouded.

Because for the grass to be greener on this side, you have to be on that side.

Then again, maybe it’s because we feel more Malaysian when we are abroad. We feel special. We feel unique. We feel one of a kind. So much so, that we gain more of ourselves when we are overseas than we ever do when we are at home.

Maybe it’s true what Theroux says, that “enlightenment will always involve the poetry of departures”.