Reading and what it meant.

I have a confession to make. 

Reading used to be a big part of my life. 

I could remember a time where I would read for enjoyment. At the height of my 'reading phase' (which was during my National Service days) I had read Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace" cover to cover alone. Whenever I look back at this particular portion of my life, I was always in awe of the tolerance I had towards Tolstoy's seminal text. I remember the portions where he would lead with a 30 - 40 page exposition of Russian history and societal movement before a familiar name would surface. I would heave a huge sigh of relief and be glad that I could get on with the narrative. Later during my NS life, I would start to read self-help books on how to improve myself. As a section commander, I would often read books on leadership and try to apply them. 

Then, university happened.

Reading for a degree must sound like the easiest thing to do in theory. In reality, reading at a university level took on a whole new dimension. Over a course of four years, it felt that we were put on an endless buffet table of the greatest works that literary canon had to offer. The only catch? We had very little time with each of these wonderful books. 

The first year was particularly memorable. The Epic of Gilgamesh (first-known collection of written text) to Waiting for Godot (a seminal piece welcoming post-modernism) was but some of the content that we covered in our very first year. Other notable philosophical texts - such as Pico della Mirandola's On the Diginity of Man, The Conference of Birds (Farid al-Din Attar), The Consolation of Philosophy (Boethius), Camera Lucida (Roland Barthes), On Photography (Susan Sontag) are but some of the more memorable ones that made their way to my attention. 

Text wise, we covered a wide spectrum and depth of the canon. Some of the more memorable ones were Ishiguro's A Pale View of Hills, Kureishi's Buddha of Suburbia, Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut), Time's Arrow (Martin Amis), Master and Margarita (Bulgakov), Lady of the Camellias (Alexandre Dumas) and The Invisible Man (Ellison).

I am fairly certain I am missing some of the other texts I enjoyed, but this is the point. I was on a delicious buffet line, but my appetite was waning because of the speed in which everything was downloaded and stored in my head. 

Somehow, at some point in my university education, reading had evolved. It was no longer something that was simply an entertainment. It became serious and was laden with academic implication. On the one hand, I was well and truly enjoying myself with every new text given to me, a part of me became trained to look out for thematic concerns, periodic issues and inter-textual references made by the writers. Reading became a quest for knowledge, one to be endless pursued at every waking opportunity. The final thesis took me on a whirlwind ride across science fiction - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Never Let Me Go, I, Robot and Her and John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism. 

Reading became tiring. Every text was part of a greater narrative. My duty as a reader increased with the knowledge that university imparted to us. World views changed, and reading "reading" became less relevant. Somewhere between Derrida, Levi Strauss and Foucault, something changed. Instead of a desire to learn more, I desired for off-time to "turn-off" and let my mind go blank, to relax. 

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I want to want to read again. 

My fondest memory of reading was during a particularly trying time during my secondary school years. I had just graduated from a diet of Enid Blython. I remember fondly "the Mystery of the Burnt House" series. Back then, being the fat kid in an all boys school + avid reader basically guaranteed my position as an outcast in a sport-obsessed school. Books became a means which I could sequester myself away from the hustle and bustle of the classroom and escape into another world. I remember picking up a John Grisham book courtesy of the school's reading program. The Firm detailed a story of a lawyer trying to bring down the Mob. It was action-packed and smart (to my Secondary self). 

I would follow the works of Grisham and Dan Brown throughout my developmental years. Angels and Demons, the Da Vinci Code became my guilty pleasures as I plowed through my JC set texts - Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Huxley's Brave New World. In the shelves of my JC library, I would discover Neil Gaiman's The Sandman graphic novels. They changed the way I perceived the world.

I want to want to read again. 

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I can't travel back in time. If NIE has been any indicator, time will only become more and more scarce. Knowledge will continue accumulating (at least until dementia sets in). It is time to accept that I have changed as a reader, and will continue changing. Embracing the change is perhaps the first step. 

I have found some solace in Singaporean writers - Alvin Pang's What Gives us Our Names resonated deeply with me. I have started reading Singaporean writers, who by some profound knowledge, must already know that the Singaporean reader cannot read too long - and have put out works that are densely short. 

It is time to start trying again. 

This is what NIE feels like.