I don’t often mourn the death of a business, but this one deserves it.

Its death is also relevant to any of you out there who enjoy reading or those of you who value literature and the written word in any meaningful way, shape, or form.

I discovered Book Depository many years ago when I was just buying books, looking for things that were rare and a little arcane; always patient to wait, I was looking to buy books at a good price and somehow just enjoy the way it felt when my mind was steeped in the written word.

I will always remember how the books would take weeks to arrive, but I will also always remember how each delivery was an event akin to the arrival of royalty in our household, in which each little box was dropped over by at the behest of the delivery-people whose “Oh it’s you again!” faces I came to know all too well as my house filled up with books, books, books!

Sapiens? Behave? Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow? The entirety of the Walter Isaacson collection, works of arcane psychology from Freud to Jung to business books and onto the Chronicles of Narnia, the Lord of the Rings, and studies of the greatest literature in the world across Europe, Asia, and planet Earth?

All of these memories came to me in those BD boxes and were accessed the same way – savagely, by tearing those little brown boxes apart, so I could begin reading the treasures within at force.

I read so much, you have no idea.

I read to the point that I ended up on the news in Malaysia.

In that single year, I purchased about 300 books (approximately MYR15000) from Book Depository in the course of a single year alone, but I suppose that that wasn’t enough.

If you haven’t already tried buying books and getting one in hand, I genuinely believe that Book Depository is the single best company that a person can purchase physical books from.

You’ll be able to purchase up until April 26th – after that, it’s khallas, game over, no more Book Depository.

I would have loved to make a post on this blog beforehand to talk about my joy and my love for reading and how I believe genuinely from the bottom of my heart that it is that which makes one of the very biggest differences in the life and ability of a student to create and to write…

But I guess it was too little and too late.

Thanks for the memories and you will be missed, Book Depository; you were a huge part of many years of my life and a company that I will always be appreciative for.

I will remember you as the single company that granted me the master key access to the strange, the arcane, the rare, and the ultimately enlightening moments of reading that have made up a long and epic journey of learning that has continued to this day and will continue in the many years hereafter; you were a major source of learning in my journey to become a better writer and thinker, and I will miss you much.

– V