Growing up, I wasn’t the bookish sort.

Growing up, I wasn’t the bookish sort. 

My earliest memory of reading directs me to my dusty shelves of Enid Blyton, Roald Dahld, translated versions of “The Three Kingdoms” and a series of illustrated parables. With some nudging, my parents would convince me to pick up a book or two-- I was never too fond of reading books that had no illustrations. However, it was the my love for tales and stories of epic Chinese dynasties and the strange archaeological finds of Egyptian tombs that made my time in library particularly productive— trawling through hours and hours of hieroglyphics and images after images of King Tut’s afterlife. Cultivating my collection of Archie’s comics was also a primary motivation for stepping into a bookshop. Secondhand book stores and thrift shop purchases were big favourites because I would walk out of these shops with many more Archies’ than getting the latest editions with the money I had! My occasional indulgence in the latest edition of Archie’s meant days of forgoing recess or begging Mom for extra money. I would also collect the comic collections of Peanut and Calvin and Hobbes.  I began to abandon my prejudice for non-pictorial “Boring Books”, when I read Totto-Chan by Kuroyanagi. It was a book I borrowed from the wispy haired classmate that sat in front of me. But I never returned Totto-Chan to him. Since then, I cleared up my dusty collection of Dahl and Blyton, indulging in the books I once thought were “boring”. 

In Secondary School, JK Rowling’s Harry Potter happened. I followed both the books and movies religiously. Though always complaining that the movie was not good enough, Rowling’s vivid writing gave me the imagination that often led me to blur the movies’ adaptation of the plot with the actual story. I mean, who doesn't love Harry Potter? (I still reread the entire series from time to time!) My readings expanded to the uncharted water of literature as I was introduced to Austen’s Emma, Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet and the Diary of Anne Frank.  My love for Dahl’s Matilda, The BFG, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Witches as a child led me to appreciate his collections of short stories and adult novels. Dahl’s dark humour and plot twists blew my mind. Inevitably in my teenage years, I also had my fair share of sappy love stories from Cecilia Ahern’s PS I Love You and If You Could See Me Now to ploughing through stories in the Chicken Soup for [my emo] Soul series. 

The A’level introduced to me to Pride and Prejudice, Othello, King Lear, Lim’s Fistful of Colours, and Sylvia Plath. It is to my alma mater’s literature department credit that taught me to love and enjoy literature. My teachers’ infectious passion for the subject inevitably had a lasting impact on my love for reading.  Their commitment to take us out on trips to watch plays and productions further fuelled my love beyond reading and into drama and theatre. In my own reading, I read Waiting for Godot, The Importance of Being Ernest and A Streetcar named Desire. Around this period,  I fell in love with James Patterson’s Honeymoon and finished up countless of his other titles. (I tend to stick to one author!) I also loved a good Paulo Coelho read including The Alchemist (wasn’t a favourite!), The Witch of Portobello, The Zahir, Brida. Most of all Coelho’s Eleven Minutes was the most poignant for me because its elegant depiction of the experiences of a young Brazilian prostitute who struggles with sexuality and desire for love changed my perspectives about the world around me. Watching movies such as the Chronicles of Narnia, Lust, Caution and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button led me to read the original stories as well.

I can’t quite recall but my guess is that it was also around this period onwards that I began to read more non-fiction. Beginning with Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers and What the Dog Saw I was drawn to his keen observations of his surroundings and how he made sense of seemingly mundane things and the world around us.  Gladwell's writing also led me to behavioural economists such as Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational, and Levitt's Freakonomics. Another one of my favourite during this period was also Daniel Tammet’s memoir Born on A Blue Day, a high functioning autistic savant, poetically details the workings of his mind through the colours of his mental landscape. Tammet's world felt captivating. Other literary works that I enjoyed included Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex, Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day and Philip Larkin’s Collected Poems. 

In my time at NUS, I also had the opportunity to stage a number of productions in the capacity as a lighting designer dealing with Noël Coward’s Hay Fever and several bills of locally written student plays. 

My recent reads include Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath, Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The life and times of Jesus of Nazareth and the required texts for QCR520.

As a child who wasn’t too bookish, here's my reading biography. Tadaah!