My Reading Journey (Shannon)

“So Matilda’s young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all the authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone” 

 -Roald Dahl, Matilda

Books had been a major source of comfort and enjoyment since I was really young, mostly due to certain circumstances, but nonetheless reading has been the exit that many searched for (metaphorically, of course). The significant contributors to my childhood and growing up years would definitely include Roald Dahl - my old (and slightly tattered) copies of James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The BFG, George’s Marvellous Medicine, Boy - Tales of Childhood and Going Solo still line my bookshelves at home. And not forgetting Enid Blyton’s heroic fictional kids in her The Famous Five and The Secret Seven series that provided the detective adventures. And somewhere wedged in between the works of these two authors were books like The Little Prince, Charlotte’s Web and… well I really cannot remember much, but yes I know it’s pretty evident that my childhood had been dominated by two authors. 

My favourite of Roald Dahl. The idea of escape. On a giant peach. With all the insects. Hmm.

It was in Primary 6 that I stumbled upon William Shakespeare’s Macbeth - my elder brother’s lower secondary literature text - and, out of pure curiosity (and the naive thought that I could read any book), I started on that. Suffice to say that I probably didn’t survive too long into it. But it did open up my youthful eyes to the sprawling world of literature works available, far more than I thought. I began picking up on a wider variety of books (by this point in time I was in possession of three library cards - my dad’s, my mum’s and mine). Throughout my secondary school years, with the compulsory literature texts aside (which, if you were wondering, included Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, The Inspector Calls and Animal Farm), I began dabbling in the works of the more “acclaimed” writers. Influential texts that had stayed and shaped my adolescent years include (and not limited to) Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, George Orwell’s 1984, Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird. It’s fair to say that, at that age, I probably couldn’t digest some of the books I’ve read back then but they had nonetheless captivated and brought me back to them as I grew older. The habit of picking up other works by the same author also continued as I consumed Mildred D. Taylor’s and George Orwell’s other books consecutively. Surprisingly, though, JK Rowling’s Harry Potter collection just didn’t seem to entice me as much as it was supposed to be… I wonder why. 

And oh, it was during this same four years in secondary school that I completed Louis Cha’s wuxia collection of 15 novels (yes I finished them all, and no I cannot remember how did I even do that). 

The period from my post-secondary to my National Service years and all the way to my undergraduate years would see the beginnings my deviation from simply reading novels, and that has partly got to do with my CCA (English Drama). My JC had also chosen a rather… unique choice of texts for our A Levels - one that would eventually grow to become yet another of my favourite genre - Detective Fiction. Authors that were covered for our syllabus included Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe, Patricia Cornwell, Raymond Chandler and the likes, and through them I began to follow the adventures of Philip Marlowe, Kay Scarpetta, Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. Added to this fold were now scores of plays that I devoured, ranging from local works like Kuo Pao Kun’s (both English and Chinese), Alfian Sa’at, Haresh Sharma, Stella Kon to international ones like Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and her Children, Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire and Samuel B. Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. This indulgence continued on into my NS years, during which I was fortunate enough to have ample time to read (yay to the three library cards I still have in my possession) and beyond. Notable texts that had stayed with me through these times include Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita and the whole load of Paulo Coelho’s works. 

And it was this time that I found Haruki Murakami (makes me wonder how did I ever miss him through all those years). And again, without needing to say more, all of his works became the main-stayers of my bookshelf and the writer himself as the topic of my thesis. Fun fact, as it was really difficult to find the English translations of his earlier works, I resorted to buying their Chinese counterparts just to lay my hands on them. 

And this is my favourite from his collection. I just have to read it at least once a year (I think it's a lit thing).

My undergraduate years reading English Literature became a breeze of sorts as I started to take modules that were suited to my tastes cultivated over the years), taking predominantly Sing-Lit, Asian Lit and Drama Lit modules. And of course, through the four years more favourite authors were added - James Joyce, Soseki Natsume and Mitch Albom, just to name a few.

Just to put a slight touch of conclusion to this, looking back, I guess my reading list and types of books (and authors) are pretty much determined by the circumstances and influences (literature texts and CCA) of the specific time periods and, through the years, they have expanded and shrunk accordingly. But for the books that did affect me, well, they truly did, and they stayed with me throughout. And hopefully all of these will be something that stays. Reading, is truly a pleasure that is very much underrated.