My Reading Journey (Crystal)

I never considered myself an avid reader though I constantly dream of having all the time in the world to read in quiet solitude. In my fantasy, if I had to live in solitude away from civilizations or in a remote village in the Himalayas, I could live on books very well.

In childhood and my teenage years, I barely touched Enid Blyton, “Chick lit” or romantic novels that were wildly popular among my peers. There was ever only one Enid Blyton book in my house—a book reward by the school which I never finish reading—and I never borrowed any from the library despite occasional visits to the library.  Being a tomboy, I avoided “Chick lit” and romantic novels like a plague with the notion that they are for “girly girls”. As for Enid Blyton, the cover illustrations never caught my fancy. What caught my attention were the highly visual and coloured DK books and the Singapore Ghost Stories by Russell Lee. I remembered many afternoons indulging in the beautiful images of spiders and insects on DK and getting spooked by Lee’s stories.  

Growing up with brothers also meant the shelves had books like Hardy Boys or Asimov’s Science Fiction, entire set of intimidating and clunky encyclopedias and such. Although I never read much of Hardy Boys or Asimov unlike my brothers, I discovered Gulliver’s Travels, which baffled me and Roald Dahl’s Matilda, Esio Trot, The Witches, The BFG and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which delighted me. Our shelves also had Jing Yong novels, Romance of the Three Kingdom, Journey to the West and Dream of the Red Chamber which my brothers devoured with much enthusiasm as they played RPG games and watched TV dramas related to these texts. I on the other hand, never tackled these texts as they were in mandarin and lacking confidence in my ability to decipher the text, I never took them up. However, the numerous passionate discussions my brothers had on these texts and watching them complete the RPG games allowed me to have a healthy fascination for these stories.

The first time I was ever serious about reading was in Secondary Three. I got a poor grade for English even though I enjoyed literature and did reasonably well. I was determined to improve my English grade so I took up my secondary school teacher’s advice to read. I forced myself to read the Straits Times for an hour daily, accompanied with a fat dictionary. Gradually, it became a habit where I would enthusiastically hunt for the paper and read it. After half a year, my grade magically jumped and I attributed it to my new acquired reading habit. This habit overcame my inertia to read. 

With the courage and confidence to read, I borrowed JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy from my Literature teacher and slowly crawled from Shire to Mordor. It was the longest novel I ever read then but it got me interested. Then I picked up The Hobbit, which still has a special place in my heart and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in the Wonderland and then C.S Lewis’s Narnia, then I discovered Harry Potter although I did not have the stamina to follow through the entire series. My enthusiasm was enough for me to choose literature for A ‘levels but I still had a love for visuals, so I would choose mangas over Ted Hughes’ poems on most days.

Sitting still to read is a challenge.
One of my favourite manga, Angel Densetsu.

In college, still feeling like I have barely read anything, I decided to take literature to force myself to read more. Through a diversity of modules like Film theory, Gender Studies, Photography and Literature to period texts and regional texts, I got exposed to many wonderful texts and authors like Kafka, Gertrude Stein, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Kurt Vonnegut, Toni Morrison,  Gabriel García Márquez etc. Some of which moved me to tears. A classmate introduced me to Murakami, and after reading Norwegian Woods, Dance Dance Dance and Wild Sheep Chase, I got interested enough to buy Kafka by the Shore which I thought was refreshingly different from his older works with its elements of magical realism.

Twice I read it and more than twice, I cried.

Upon graduation I begged for a kindle and got it smuggled from the US. I had it loaded with more books than I can read. My shelves are brimming with books I have bought even though I could rarely have the luxury of time and energy to read. In recent years, I have taken an interest in Food writing and got myself Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Honey from a Weed: Fasting and Feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, The Cyclades and Apulia by Patience Gray as inspired by Rick Stein, MFK Fisher’s How to Cook a Wolf and Best Food Writing 2011, 2012, 2013. Yet my journey still has a long way to go and I need a decent reading light for my kindle.