Kuala Lampur, June 4 -- Last week, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim called on Malaysians to strengthen the nation's reading culture, stressing that knowledge is essential to national progress.

He also said that books are a source of true knowledge, not social media.

That kind of struck home for me because I totally know the feeling.

Last year, with all the hype about The Three-Body Problem on Netflix, I decided to buy Cixin Liu's first book of his trilogy.

When I shared a photo of the book on WhatsApp, I was duly reminded of how rare a species I seem to be. At least two of my friends said they quit buying physical books and only read books on Kindle or download them to read on their devices.

Now I'm perfectly cool with that. A...