Nisha’s Reading Biography - Open your hearts and feel the words

 As cliché as it sounds I truly read to learn, to understand, to grow, to discover, to imagine, to travel and to tap into the depths of my heart to feel. For these reasons I love reading. However I never understood the importance of reading as a child and thus I began my reading journey by hating to read. I was a late bloomer when it came to loving books and reading simply for the joy and pleasure of it. I have always been an audio person more then a visual person and thus music was my one and only love and everything else was secondary. Therefore I preferred listening to someone reading stories to me instead of picking a book up and reading it on my own. I found listening more enjoyable then reading because I found it amusing, fun and intriguing how each reader brings a unique voice and tone to the words and how they dramatize and express the words and emotions of the words which is what I loved most as a child. I loved watching the facial expressions and the way each word sounded when my parents or my uncle and aunt read stories to me. I hated sitting quietly in one place and staring at the words in the book by myself and reading silently. Silence was something that I did not appreciate as a child as I was a hyperactive kid and I could not sit still and do something like reading.

Thus to get me interested in reading my parents introduced me to picture books as words was something I did not fancy more than pictures as I liked to create my own words based on the pictures instead of having to read someone else’s interpretation of the pictures which most of the time did not coincide with my interpretation of the pictures. I remember crying when I thought that a tiger was a cute, friendly animal because to me the tiger in the book looked so friendly but was broken when my mum burst my bubble by saying that the tiger ate the deer. Slowly my mum introduced me to short stories and one which I loved reading was the entire collection of Mr. Men and later Little Miss children books. I remember reading the books out loud and clear with as much expressions as possible as only then I found that my time reading was worthwhile. These books taught me to understand the different personalities and emotions of people as the name of the book suggests. I also remember drawing the characters of the Mr. Men and Little Miss series out and telling the stories on my own as I loved the brightly coloured and boldly drawn pictures which never failed to make my day. I remember calling my brother, Mr. Cheerful, my dad, Mr. Busy, my mum Little Miss Neat and being called little Miss chatterbox mostly and little Miss Sunshine at times. Other books that I read during kindergarten that I remember and loved reading would be Alice in Wonderland which introduced me to the genre of fantasy, fairy tales like Three Little Pigs, Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood. I loved these books as they taught me important morals and values which my mum used to emphasize as she selected books for me to read based on that. I also remember owning a pet rabbit after reading Alice and the Wonderland.

Other books that I read during my childhood, were more fantasy books such as The Brothers Grimm stories like Cinderella, Rapunzel, The Frog Prince, Snow White and Children’s and Household Tales. I was also unfortunately into Disney when I was young and thus I read all the princess books such as the Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty. It was only in the later years during secondary school when I learned to read in depth and not just do a surface reading that I realized how stereotypical the portrayal of the princesses were, as they were always in need of ‘saving’ which I could not stand. Other books that I read was a book that was for curious kids though I can’t remember the title. The book was in a question and answer format that answered questions such as why is the sky blue and the grass green. My dad got me this book as I kept asking a lot of questions all the time and so I read many books of that nature but I can’t remember the exact titles.  My dad also had an entire collection of the encyclopedia from A-Z which I used to read as I wanted answers to my questions which I rarely got from my parents who always directed me to books. I also read books that my friends introduced to me in primary school as they kept promoting them to me and I remember having competitions among my friends as to who can finish a book first. Some books that they introduced to me were Enid Blyton’s the Noddy books which I loved as he was kind and honest, Roald Dahl’s Charlie and The Chocolate Factory which I also loved and I remember hoping for the golden ticket when I bought chocolates. Other books that I read following the trends of my friends were Sweet Valley High series and the Babysitter club. I did not fancy such teen drama but they gave me opportunities to explain why I hate these books while my friends brag about how good the books are and how they wish they were such popular girls in school.

When I entered Secondary school, I remember loving the Reader’s Digest for the stories and the new words section plus the historical news which my school made us read to improve our English, in addition to newspapers. It was also in Secondary school when I started to choose my own books to read and some of which that I loved was the Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul which had inspirational and motivational lessons on friendship, love, poems and problems which the teenagers faced as they grow up and so on. The books in that series taught me values of respect and love for oneself and others and most importantly because they were true stories it was very heartwarming. It is a good book for teenagers as the lessons and advices are real and not fictional. I was also very much into romance novels and I read and love all of Nicholas Sparks romance novels and I re read them as the movies based on his books came out and are still being released. I have just finished his current book Safe Haven and I am looking forward to watching it on screen. I love the beautiful heartfelt quotes in his books and they never fail to warm my heart. I have all his quotes in my quote book and one quote that I would like to share here would be “You're going to come across people in your life who will say all the right words at all the right times. But in the end, it's always their actions you should judge them by. It's actions, not words, that matter.” – Nicholas Sparks from The Rescue

I picked out this quote among his many quotes as this quote reminds me of one of my favorite books of all time which is The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. This book was introduced to me by my late German uncle who I was very fond off because of the child in him that I could always relate to which I till today aspire to keep alive and not be influenced by the general mentality of the grown ups, who fail to appreciate the beautiful things in life and who waste their life away with unnecessary worries and complain about how unhappy they are, because their happiness is based on meaningless things. I recommend that everyone should read this book and I hope that this book becomes one of the literature texts in Secondary schools one day! I have read this book again and again and each time there is always a lesson I can learn or relearn. I am always inspired and the book never fails to make my heart feel so warm. A beautiful book on the theme of love and here is a timeless quote from the book “ Now here is my secret, very simply: you can only see things clearly with your heat. What is essential is invisible to the eye”. – Antoine de Saint Exupery

Apart from romance and love I was also introduced to the genre of mystery from the Nancy Drew books which I never finished the entire series as after awhile although it was interesting I realized I was more into books that dealt with the matters of the heart. Another book I loved was To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee which I was glad that I revisited in NIE as I learnt more about the messages and values and morals of the book. It was also this book that taught me the meaning of bildungsroman which was a term that I learnt from Dr Pat Wong in NIE. I also loved the books by Cecelia Ahern especially PS, I Love You and all her other books up to date. Another author that I loved was Lauren Kate and I read the entire Fallen series. Her books unlike the typical human romance was between a human and a supernatural fallen angel which was something different. I also read The Vampire Diaries books although I prefer the television series of it because of the cast. I also read the so called ‘greatest love story of all time’ being Romeo and Juliet which everyone loved but I hated because to me it showed me the folly of love which was not that great after all.

Moving on to my time in Junior college my taste in books changed to philosophy and I read a handful of non fiction books on that genre; such as books by Deepak Chopra which I enjoyed as they were very insightful such as The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, Quantum Healing: Exploring the Frontiers of Mind Body Medicine and The Path to Love: Spiritual Strategies for Healing to mention a few. These books have opened my eyes, mind and most importantly my heart about the nature of love in its true essence. As part of my Junior College’s curriculum I read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and I fell in love with Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet and this book got me interested in her other romance books such as Emma and Sense and Sensibility. I also read Suchen Christine Lim’s Fistful of Colours for my local text in JC which I liked because of how the protagonist expresses herself through art and paintings. I also read Sylvia Plath’s Ariel book as part of my literature curriculum and I found all her poems highly disturbing and depressing. I also did Shakespeare as part of my curriculum which covered King Lear and Othello which I enjoyed because my literature teachers were awesome. I went on to read other Shakespeare plays and sonnets after my A levels as my school curriculum had sooooo much readings, as on top of literature I also did history and economics which had a zillion readings.

In NIE, I loved the insightful knowledge I gained from Gary Chapman’s books such as 5 Love Languages and Things I Wish I’d Known Before We Got Married which as the name suggests was on love and yes I love, love and I love reading to be a better lover of life. In NIE as part of the curriculum I read Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and Hamlet. I am not much of a fan of Shakespeare and I do not believe that literature equals Shakespeare as some people would choose to believe but there are much to learn about the literary devices from those books. I also read many local and Southeast Asian texts in NIE as part of the curriculum. The books I enjoyed reading as part of the curriculum were The Crucible, Jane Eyre, The Great Gatsby, Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities and Gulliver’s Travels. The books that I read outside of NIE were Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist which I loved as it taught me that if I want something with all of my heart “the whole universe will conspire for you to achieve it”. The book also reinforced what I believed in that we should always follow our hearts as “wherever your heart is, that is where you’ll find your treasure.” I also loved other philosophical books like the online version of Unio Mystica by Osho from which I learnt about love and here is a quote in the book that speaks for itself “The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it is not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of the other person — without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other.”Another philosophical book which I enjoyed was Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband which had many beautiful quotes and one of which is “To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.” Finally I also love Jodi Picoult’s books as  she touches on the human emotion and so her books are very moving such as My Sister’s Keeper which is a beautiful story of how love wins over human weakness. I also loved the Hunger Games trilogy books by Suzanne Collins because of the portrayal of the main female protagonist Katniss Everdeen who is so strong and brave unlike the usual portrayal of females as weak and as damsels in distress. The book also educates the readers of how the governments and the people in charge, don't really care about us as we choose to believe and naively let ourselves to be controlled.

My choice of books has gone through some changes over the past few years. I started out my journey with a given selection of fantasy books which tapped into my imagination and brought me different worlds and I moved on to romance novels in my teen years and to philosophical and spiritual books in my young adult years. Currently I am into reading a book by Paul Tough titled How children succeed and it’s a good book to read which will either change the way you think about raising children, in our case teaching children or reinforce what we believe are essential life skills children should be equipped with. I shall end of my reading biography with a quote on the importance of reading. “The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss