Price is definitely one thing, I believe.

Books are just too expensive over here, especially when you compare to how much the average hourly pay is, for laymen work. Guys in America are getting a minimum hourly wage of $8, and paperback novels are around $8.99~12.99, while guys over here are earning around RM4.5 per hour, and the same novel costs RM39.90/49.90. It's ridiculous, really.

Even Reader's Digest is kinda ridiculously priced (RM15 per copy, srsly?), and I only buy them (they're the perfect thing stuff in your bag/pocket to read when queuing or waiting) when they do the buy-1-free-1 thing from time to time.

But yeah, reading is good. I find myself spending hours and days reading whenever I stumble across a good book, attempting to finish it as quickly as possible (last one I read was this well known book about an English educated Chinese woman's life in China during the cultural revolution. I can't seem to recall the title at the moment, but it was so well written, I was completely absorbed by her struggles and hardships faced in the book)