I am not really big on personal essays, I prefer my non-fictions stiff and academic. Yet, it seems I haven’t found any personal essays collection that left a lingering bad impression on me. In fact, some of them were one of the best read on my list that year. For example, Tiada Ojek di Paris by Seno Gumira Ajidarma is one of my all-time favorite of his. Art and Collecting Art by Oei Hong Djien is not too shabby for a collector’s thinkpieces. Seribu Senyum dan Setetes Air Mata by Myra Sidharta is definitely a must-read, at the point where I don’t think you can call yourself a well-read Indonesian reader if you haven’t read Myra Sidharta.

And I found Ajidarma’s and Sidharta’s fragment in Andina Dwifatma’s Menua dengan Gembira. Admittedly, this is her first book I have read and I am not too much of online articles reader (ironically, while I also write them, haha). Menua dengan Gembira essays deals with the mundane of the digitally-conscious suburban, a reality that is not very caricatural, but real regardless. This book serves as an artifact, marking the changing world in Indonesian capital periphery.

Menua dengan Gembira consists of 26 essays, and 140 pages short. I read the whole thing in one Sunday afternoon, and it was a really great afternoon. I breezed through the book and gained interesting nuggets of insight in each piece. Dwifatma is a keen observer, and a better writer. In a sense, she actually capable of mending the observed phenomenon with rigorous academic validation without sounding snobbish. Added with her sense and perspective, reading the book was like talking to a well-read and cautious mother.

My favorite piece was Berlindung pada Buku-Buku Self-Help, which harbor sympathy and cynicism. She pointed out some of the valid talking points in some of the books she criticized, while, well, criticized them. She is definitely kinder than me, because I agreed to her points and even took it further: I loathe people who write self-help book, and despise those who decided to read them. Literature is right there, not even on different bookstore. How is reading self-imposing and self-righteous writer with questionable philosophy and moral better than story that makes you think and learn valuable life lesson?

Anyway, the book was definitely a joy ride. The book definitely entices me to read more of her. I just hope I have the time, though.

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Book Identification

Title	: Menua dengan Gembira
Writer	: Andina Dwifatma
Publisher	: Shira Media
Year	: 2023
Pages	: 140 pages
ISBN	: 978-602-7760-70-7