Hi. My name is Tony Djohan. I live in Jakarta, Indonesia. I grew up in Medan. I studied in Bandung.
I couldn't remember exactly when I started reading, but I couldn't remember of a time when I wasn't reading either. Childhood amnesia! I do remember well the books I started with. Children books translated to Indonesian, loads and loads of Enid Blyton and Alfred Hitchcock. Then to Agatha Christie. Good times. I moved on to Sidney Sheldon, Stephen King, Anne Rice, Tom Clancy, John Grisham and many others. Very recently, I've been utterly sucked into the twisted discworld of Terry Pratchett. Beyond rescue. 8-)
I read plenty of business books in college. There is a particular book by Peter Drucker, easily more than a thousand pages, which I'm positive I read at least 3 times. Other important management writers for me are Charles Handy, Senge (5th Discipline), Collins (Good to Great), Porter (Competitive), and Kaplan (Balanced Scorecard). In the last few years, I'm more into popular 'light' economics (Krugman, Levitt, and Sen).
In fiction, I enjoy classics (Austen, Brontes, Conrad, Dickens, Forster, Hawthorne, all the way to Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Wharton). Please excuse the name dropping, *-) I suppose it's involuntary, the desire to keep up. Must be insecurities coupled with snobbishisms. Haha. I also took in my share of newer fictions. Aside from US-UK ones, I do plenty of 'oriental' works such as East Asian, South Asians (Roy, etc.), Turkish (Pamuk, etc.), and others.
Nowadays most of the books that found their way to my shelves are non-fiction. An engineer by education, and computer geek by past vocation, I'm constantly compelled to read science books. A major part of my reading list include natural history, life science (Gould, Dawkins, and others), math and statistics, physics (plenty) & chemistry (fewer), environmental (Carson and the likes) and cognitive stuff (Pinker, Gladwell, LeDoux, et al).
I like to read history, particularly of ancient civilizations, medieval to renaissance up to enlightment, Western and Eastern (China & India). That brought me to the history of faiths (Karen Armstrong et al.) and recently of colonialism (Niall Fergusson and his ilk).
I'm a buddhist which explains the buddhist books, but I do try to educate myself of christianity (on account of catholic schools), islam (living in a majority-moslem country), and other religions. Philosophy, I tried dabbling. As in Somebody or Some Ideas for Beginners, or A Very Short Introduction to Stuff. 8-) For now, intrigued by Nietzsche which I'm happy to find surprisingly easy to read, but will last a quite a bit of 'chewing'!
Lately, in the last several years, I'm venturing into a new business (organic fertilizer) which brought me to agriculture and gardening. I've been bulking up the section on gardening, farming, permaculture, organic practices, soil science, and the lot. It's been real fun. By the way, I grow stuff too. At my house and at my sister's country home (edible stuff, vegs, fruits, herbs). Oh, I rear earthworm and produce wormcast too, or more accurately, I have them done for me. 8-)
I love Shelfari. I have different circles of friends to talk about different books and authors, to share the craze and daze, be they raves or rants. Hmmm, laid on a bit thick there... 8-) Some books are of course fortunate. Anywhere in the world, one could form a bookclub on say, Rowling at the drop of a hat. But for many others? You'd be hard put to find another reader in the same city, let alone form a club. Et voila, Shelfari. Just knowing that others also have a particular book, or has read it, or simply would like to read it, is somehow comforting. Bravo! Allez!
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