BBI Anniversary Guest Post 2014: Buku-Buku Biru's First Guest-Blogger, @putripwu!

Tanggal 13 April 2014 kemarin, Blogger Buku Indonesia (BBI) baru saja berulang tahun yang ketiga! YAIY! Nah, untuk merayakannya, BBI mengadakan dua events seru, salah satunya adalah "BBI Anniversary Guest Post 2014" yang saya ikuti. Di projek tersebut, saya berperan sebagai: guest blogger, yakni menyiapkan dan menulis postingan untuk di-post di blog milik blogger BBI lain; dan juga sebagai host blogger, yang mendapat posting tamu dari blogger BBI lain. 

Pada kesempatan kali ini, saya menjadi host blogger dari Mbak Putri, pemilik blog "Celoteh Putri" dan "Read. Review. Romance". Hah? Itu dua-duanya blog buku? Hahahah iya, keren banget, kan? Kini, Mbak Putri lagi istirahat pasca penempatan PTT di Kota Tidore Kepulauan disambi dengan bekerja. FYI, PTT itu semacam pegawai sementara Kementerian Kesehatan (Kemenkes) yang ditempatkan di daerah terpencil dan sangat terpencil di seluruh Indonesia dengan kontrak kerja 1-2 tahun, mengingat bahwa masih banyak daerah di Indonesia yang kekurangan tenaga kesehatan. Untuk menanggulangi hal tersebut, Kemenkes menawarkan para dokter di seluruh Indonesia untuk ditempatkan di berbagai daerah di Indonesia. Cool, right?

But, hey, tulisan Mbak Putri untuk BBI Anniversary Guest Post 2014 kali ini juga nggak kalah cool.  Ketika baca buku, tentu kita pernah kan yang namanya "naksir" dengan tokoh cowok di dalamnya? Sebut aja Augustus Waters, Tobias Eaton, atau si vampir Edward Cullen. Namun, apa bener kalau pembaca yang punya books boyfriends itu konyol atau memang cuma buat seneng-senengan aja? Nah, melalui postingan di bawah ini, Mbak Putri mencoba membahas tentang fenomena books boyfriends yang pasti pernah kita alami.

I Feel You, Ana

Minggu lalu, saya baru nonton film berjudul 'Liberal Arts' (2012), yang di-direct dan ditulis oleh Josh Radnor. Yup, si Ted Mosby dari serial HIMYM itu! Secara garis besar, film ini bercerita tentang seorang pria berumur 30-an bernama Jesse (Josh Radnor) yang jatuh cinta dengan gadis berumur 19 tahun bernama Zibby (Elizabeth Olsen). Sekilas, mungkin 'Liberal Arts' terdengar seperti film-film romantis lain. Tapi, percaya deh, it's not.

Jesse sangat suka membaca. Ia bahkan sering berkunjung ke sebuah toko buku di mana Ana (Elizabeth Reaser) suka diam-diam memperhatikannya. Suatu hari, Jesse datang ketika toko buku tersebut telah tutup, tapi ia malah jadi terlibat obrolan dengan Ana, mendengarkan wanita itu berbicara mengenai kecintaannya terhadap buku.

Scene di mana dialog di bawah ini muncul!

Ana: I love books. I do in, like, the dorkiest way possible. 

Jesse: Oh, me too. It's a problem. 

Ana: Like, I love trees cause they give us books. 

Jesse: Super cool of the trees to do that, Right? 

Ana: I'm actually... this is weird. I'm actually trying to read less. 

Jesse: Why? 

Ana: I felt like I wasn't watching enough television. No, l just started to feel like reading about life was taking time away from actually living life, so I'm trying to, like, accept invitations to things, say "hi" to the world a little more. 

Jesse: That sounds scary. It's going well? 

Ana: It's... okay. I keep thinking I'd be so much happier in bed with a book, and that makes me feel not super cool. I still read tons. I just feel like I'm more aware of a book's limitations. Does that make sense? 

Jesse: Yeah, totally.

....

So, what do you think? Should we try to read less so that we can really live the life?

Yay or nay?

Words of the Day

"Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they'll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back."

-Colin Singleton (An Abundance of Katherines by John Green) 

Words of the Day

"...What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it."  

-Holden Caulfield (The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger) 

Words of the Day

"Do you think being an avid reader is easy? It's not. It's not at all. 

You usually have crush on your schoolmates, right? Well, we fall for fictional characters. Oh things we'll do for them to come alive! If (s)he doesn't know your existence, that hurts but well, you can still see him from afar, right? We can't. We can only see them in words, imagine what they look like. Desperately longing, helplessly being in love. 

And the things we do to our favorite authors. We stalk, we write love letters, we curse their genius brains in secret. It's exhausting! And we count days, weeks, months; we root for the day they publish their latest works, or even announce that they are writing a new one. 

And the expectation! We can't stand but putting our hopes in the sky. We want their works to be good all the time. If they don't, we cry.

Getting a tweet/e-mail/any sign of appreciation from our favorite authors feels like we've just won a lottery. It's just too precious. I would feel like putting "_____ tweeted me" in my achievement column (In fact, I almost did). And we constantly wonder what our favorite authors will be doing by now. Are they eating what I'm eating? Are they even human? 

We also have no control of our inner demons; the other being in ourselves who feeds on new books. Our tendency to hoard. Do you think we don't feel sad of the piles of unread books in our shelves? We weep for them. But we can't help it. We're numb without books. It's not healthy for our wallets. Nor is it for our body. But if we see books and we can't buy or read it, we're like suffocated. You might as well tie us up in chairs and put us in a dark, creepy room and duct-tape our mouths. The feeling isn't unlikely. It's mutual. 

But you should know why we love books that much. 

A book is a house. It offers us blankets, warm clothes, milk, biscuits. It's our friend, our teacher, our enemy, our guardian, our pet. Books are loyal. If you get tired of them, they understand. Maybe you want to go on an adventure, try new things, then may think. Your friends may change, you may change, but books don't. The characters on your favorite books won't. You dump them for a while, they're always waiting. When you miss them, they welcome you open-handed. And it's sad. Knowing you can grow up, study hard, earn money, get married, have kids. They don't, unless their creators want them to."

-@ndarow