Narawan Pathomwat shrieks when asked how many books she has in possession that she hasn't read. Well, it's quite something to put that question to the owner of an art library _ equivalent to asking her whether she has read every single tome in her collection she's sharing with the reading public.
"That I cannot read all of these books is the reason why I started The Reading Room in the first place," said Narawan, a former researcher at the Asia Art Archive-turned-founder of a public reading space for art and culture enthusiasts. "Most of them are art books I have been collecting since college years."
Although The Reading Room, located on Silom Road, houses mainly arts and culture publications totalling nearly 2,000 volumes, Narawan's personal interests spans across all fields of humanities. Her personal collection at home boasts approximately 1,000 fictions and books on history, although sharing them with the public is still far from her mind.
What are you reading?
Glory by Vladimir Nabokov.
What is the book you’ve always wanted to read but still haven’t?
Millions and millions of them!
Why haven’t you?
Time. I can’t live forever.
Is there a book you’ve read but never managed to finish it?
Robert Burton’s The Anatomy Of Melancholy; James Frazer’s The Golden Bough; Edward Gibbon’s The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire.
Did you ever buy a book because everybody was talking about it, but when you actually read it you don’t like it at all?
No.
Roughly, at home how many books have you bought that you haven’t started reading?
Over 500.
Have you ever judged a book by its cover—and bought it?
I’ve never judged a book by its front cover, I always do by its back cover.
