Growing up with Books-Shalini’s Reading Biography.

I could never understand how children my age would say reading is boring. To me, reading was never boring. Reading was always this gateway to fantastic worlds, to having adventures, meeting interesting characters and being swept away by exciting plots and storylines. It allowed my imagination to run wild and I enjoyed submerging myself into the story world and most often forgetting my own.  That was what reading was for me as a kid, escapism into worlds far more interesting than my own.

My first memories of books were the Lady Bird series, little hard cover yellow books that brought me into the world of literacy as my mother read to me (at first) and then with me.  When I could start reading, I spent hours escaping into Enid Blyton’s playful, magical worlds, being swept away into magical floating lands in “The Faraway Tree” series, swimming in the natural seawater pool (which fascinated me greatly) with the girls from “Malory Towers”, going on adventures and picnics in the lush English country side in “The famous Five” and solving mysteries with “The Secret Seven”. I consumed these series with the voracious appetite for imaginative play and could not get my hands off them. These books were filled with the nuances of childhood, curiosity, the adventures and friendship that I relished reading them with great delight.

As I made my way into pre-pubescence, I entered the world of crushes, first “loves” and sisterhood with the babysitters from Ann M. Martin’s “The Babysitter’s Club” and the twins from Francine Pascal’s “Sweet Valley Twins”. I was so in love with these series that I torpedoed my way through shelf after shelf of these books in the library. Greatly influenced by the books, my friends and I had this idea to start a club with regular meetings and exclusive membership. So we started the “Sweet Valley Unicorn club” (how original!). We sent each other “secrets” through letters that we mailed each other and had “private” meetings where talked about school (because we were all from different schools)and the crushes we had. Of course, this didn’t last very long as we realised Singaporean mothers were not too keen to let their young daughters travel from Yishun to Bukit Batok and vice versa and so we could not meet as often as the girls we’d read about. The letters stopped as well, basically because we already met once a week and had plenty of time to talk then. So, sadly, Sweet Valley Unicorn club separated.

Entering into adolescence, I “upgraded” from “Sweet valley Twins” to “Sweet Valley High”. I also picked up countless love stories (blame the hormones) and stepped into the dark, deceitful, sensual world of Sidney Sheldon’s novels and immediately was captivated by the power, romance and deception that kept me hooked to every page. As a result I took an interest to thrillers and I started reading every other thriller I could lay my hands on in the library. It was at this point that in my usual library visits, I chanced upon books by Lurlene McDaniel, which introduced me to the feelings of pain, loss and hope and on the topic of death and dying. These were books on teenagers with different types of cancer, illnesses, or had to go through the loss of a young sibling or friend. It was very different from the happy stories I had previously read. I remember almost always crying after each book. The stories filled with me sadness yet, I drew strength from the bravery and courage exhibited by her characters. Her books were of inspiration and I became aware and more sensitive to such things in the real world. Reading sensitized me. It was more than just escapism now.

So finally, in Secondary 2, I met the King of Literature, William Shakespeare. I was so excited because back then, Shakespeare equated to literature for me and as such, I felt that I had entered a higher class of readership doing Shakespeare. I used to love deciphering Shakespeare’s cryptic code of English and I felt smart. It may have helped that it was Romeo and Juliet. At this point, I also developed a strange interest in Greek mythology and found myself borrowing huge, illustrated books to read stories about the myriad of Greek Gods and Goddesses.

And of Course, nobody could escape the spell of Harry Potter.  

In Junior College, I read Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”. While most of my classmates cringed at reading the dense pages of the novel, I relished reading, re-reading and understanding novel. The symbolic darkness and the enduring questions of humanity and what human beings were capable of intrigued me. And my favourite, F Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”. Somehow it has been one of my favourite books. The sense of irrevocable loss, unyielding hope and despair stirred feelings in me and made me feel strongly for the characters. It was at this juncture that a friend introduced two books that changed my reading forever. Arundhati Roy’s “The God of Small Things” and Khaled Hossein’s “The Kite Runner”. Once again, the world in the novels did not bring me to happy places. It brought me to worlds filled with unfairness, shame, regret, pain and cruelty and the feelings evoked were overwhelming and all-consuming and it made me really feel and think about the human heart and mind. They seemed more real to me now then the happy love stories. To me this felt more human. (As morbid as it seems, I also think I like books that are profoundly sad and bring tears to my eyes). Also, these books seemed like gate ways into these hidden worlds, into lives of people who live on the same planet but experience very different lives.

In Uni, naturally as a Literature major I was introduced to many reads, some I liked and some I did not. What interested me greatly was South East Asian literature and Postcolonial Literature. I really enjoyed reading about these other worlds, of places I could never image being born into and understanding societies so different from my own in worlds so different from mine. These modules also influenced my current reading choices. I currently like Asian, Indian or basically non- American or British writers writing about issues pertaining to the marginal or transnational communities and about other societies. Most recently, at book sale, I grabbed the works of Salman Rushdie, Jumpha Lahiri, Suketu Mehta, Khaled Hosseini and Christopher G. Moore which I am very excited to start reading but hope to find the time to.

Growing up, reading has played a big role in my life. From escaping into fantastical strange lands as a kid to entering foreign unknown territories as a young adult, reading has broadened my knowledge to think of issues affecting people and ask questions about humanity.

To me;

Reading is to escape.

Reading is to feel.

Reading is to live vicariously.

Reading is to learn.

And reading is to be human.