secret-keeper

Gigapedia is the best site out there for book lovers and nerds. It's safe to say that it's the most comprehensive collection of ebooks online to date.

My parents never thought it was a good idea to spend money for books when I can borrow my friends', and I was much more interested in food than books to save up for them, plus books are mighty expensive here.

When I found Gigapedia, and torrents to boot, I spent hours downloading media that you formerly had to pay for. I read books I couldn't have accessed even in local bookstores. I was reading a book a day, and I was instantly exposed to a library of exciting possibilities. For an interdisciplinary nerd like me, I was in knowledge utopia. I could read books on media studies, urban planning, or simply even update myself with the latest literary fads like Twilight, Dan Brown, Sookie Stackhouse.

My last summer was spent reading entrepreneurship books and the tales of Sandman by Neil Gaiman. I came across literary jewels like Time Traveler's Wife, Water for Elephants, Guernsey, and others. Books have left me richer in every sense of the word, and I don't feel like I wasted my money when I end up reading a bad book.  I no longer had any excuse to be bored, and the television was neglected more and more each day. My eyes still hurt at the end of the day, but now I'm conscious to rest them every once in a while.

(When I move into my own place, if I must have a television, I don't plan on getting cable, and I'll have it wired to my desktop. Or, I'll get an IMac and place it in the living room.)

Of course, even though Gigapedia is about as popular as Fight Club (rules 1 & 2: You do not talk about gigapedia), I'm excited to share my find with friends. I don't understand when people are self-confessed book lovers yet they're turned off by the premise that books can be read on a computer. It's understandable when your eyes get tired easily, but overappreciating the tactile sense of having an actual book just sounds snobbish. I mean, you read books for the content. You don't possess books merely to flick your hands through the pages, and run your fingers through the ink. You read most books once (because there are so many more wonderful pages to read) and books spend most of their time sitting pretty / gathering dust on a bookshelf. You might like the paperbacks more, but I can assure you I've read more books than you have since the time I found out about gigapedia, and my wallet is not injured by it. So -- that tells me what kind of book lover you really are.

There are still some books I really want that I can't find on Gigapedia. Rilke's Ahead of All Parting is one such example. I love Rilke's poetry and I wouldn't mind going through his words again and again. I'd appreciate the simplicity of rummaging through the pages and wonder what new revelation I might stumble upon next. So I can say that some books, at the very least, are worth keeping around on your bookshelf for.

With that said, I would really like to own an ebook reader one of these days, because reading all day on my CRT does get to me.