NaqibHanis Public Speaking 2010

5 Sains 1
SMK
Taman Ria
Jaya

Good day to the honourable judges, teachers, fellow competitors and the audients.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Some people regard books as one of the most boring object ever exist in this world.
There are people who can’t even stand within five miles radius centred of a book. Especially
those book which the pages range was over 3oo. Trust me on this, you can find a lot of
people who sees reading as a sheer torture. However, there are some other people who think
books and reading just the way Alice regarded the Wonderland.

Book lovers, they can sit on a chair, completely immobilized, just by reading. If you
are sitting beside a person who are reading, especially novels, you can actually see how their
expression changes. It can be range, tender, disappointment and they can even cry when it
comes to the sad part. When you observe all these changes of expression in them, they are
actually, completely oblivious of you. This is because physically, they might be not moving.
But, mentally, they might be across the world. Those who reads, they are actually learning,
exploring, seeing things from different perspective of life each time they flip through pages.

Ladies and gentleman,

Don’t you see? Don’t you see the thrills that books can give us? Everyone in this
world has their own way in seeing things. Each author in this world writes out their hearts.
Each with different pair of eyes...different way of life...different learning...different
journey...everyone has their own story to tell. It is a shame that not many had written them
out...and an embarrassment if few had read them.

Books…letters had come along with humans for centuries. The ancient people had
created letters such as hieroglyphs, hieratic, demotic, Sanskrit, ideogram and a lot more.
Imagine how the world would be if nobody writes and nobody reads…we will be illiterate.
There will be so much knowledge that we will miss. Worse, we might still live in the pre
historic era right now. There will be no Archimedes, no Avicenna, no Galileo Galilei…no…
nothing. Even though right now that we live in modern era, there still so much that we need
to learn.

Books and knowledge are treasure that our accentors had left for us. Treasure that no
gold’s...or even petroleum in this world could pay off. Al-Quran, Bible, The Old Testament
and Badghavad-Ghita were some of the religious books that had been guiding human life for
centuries.

Reading does not only provide us with knowledge. It also makes us more open-
minded. Those who do not read, they were like living in a box, held captive by taboos.
These kinds of people will not able to accept changes. On the other hand, those who read,
they are capable to cope with different situation, different places and different culture. They

1 11 Mei 2010 – SMK Gurun, Kedah.

 NaqibHanis Public Speaking 2010
5 Sains 1
SMK
Taman Ria
Jaya

are able to think analytically and critically. These kinds of people are the one whocan adopt
and live at any part on the globe.

Some people give excuses that they do not have enough time to complete reading a
book. Yet, they spent hours in front of a computer surfing the net. “Looking for
information...” Or so they say. But ladies and gentlemen, do you realise that there is no
certainty of the validity or even the authenticity of the information that we received? As we
all know, the article that we read from the net were derived with bias. On the other hand, the
facts that we received from books are most authentic. Why? You may ask? A book, before it
is published it need to go through certain procedure to ensure the accuracy and the
genuineness of the contents. Therefore, the facts from books are much more reliable than the
internet.

Next, we can compare books and movies. It is a nowadays trend of the directors to
adopt a story of a novelto a movie. Well, if you ask those who watch the movie but did not
read the book, they might say that the movie was awesome (enthusiastically). However for
those who did read the story, they will actually frown in distaste, saying that the movie was a
shame. We can’t blame the readers for overall being sarcastic and discriminative, actually.
They had read and see the story from a very clear view. After all, of course there will be a lot
of imperfection in the movies. How can a story that a person willneed at least three days to
complete reading (a day for a fast reader) being shrunk to two and a half hour? If you watch
movies, it will just come and go. There will be not much to think about. But if you read…
you will understand the whole story, every single detail and most importantly you will
received the message that the author wanted to tell.

As I said before, people and books are not easily separated, even though some people
do not like them. However, there is no denial that people had learnt and explore so much
from books.

William Shakespeare had seen that. That is why he portrays the beauty of his beloved
in Sonnet 18.

“…so long as man can breathe…

Or eyes can see…

So long leaves this…

…And this gives life to thee…”

He knows that people will read this poem for a very long time. And he was right.
People had read it for centuries.

2 11 Mei 2010 – SMK Gurun, Kedah.

 NaqibHanis Public Speaking 2010
5 Sains 1
SMK
Taman Ria
Jaya

As long as people continue to read and write, the legacy of knowledge that we learn
from our accentors will broaden and enriches us with new input as we explore the world that
filled with exciting and mysterious hidden knowledge, waiting to be studied…

With that, I thank you.

3 11 Mei 2010 – SMK Gurun, Kedah.