Sarah's Reading Biography

After reading my colleagues’ reading biographies, I realised that I am not really an avid reader as compared to the others. I believe it is because I am more fixated to graphics, and I get attracted to pictures and colours more than anything else especially when I was younger. I have a sister who is a year older than me and she enjoys reading. My parents took this opportunity to get me interested in reading. It works as I was introduced to a variety of books and authors which includes books and stories by Enid Blyton, Aesop’s Fables and Mr Men and Little Miss. I enjoyed reading Enid Blyton’s The Naughtiest Girl Series the most, but I have to admit that I am attracted to these books because they have drawings in it. What kept me from reading the books was my love for colouring, so my mum used the extrinsic motivation to encourage to me to read more: I can only colour the pages at the back if I finish reading the books. I also read The Bookworm Series, which again I was mostly attracted by the graphics.

When I was in upper primary, I was introduced to an adventure series titled The Three Investigators through a book fair in school. That was my first experience reading on my own initiative. I was fascinated by their adventures that every page kept me asking for more.  

In secondary school, I was more obsessed with art than reading. I only read my literature texts; The Bully by Yvonne Coppard as well as the abridged version of Shakespeare’s texts including Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. That was when I was first introduced to Shakespeare (albeit abridged). It was definitely difficult to grasp because of the language barrier and I only came to appreciate Shakespeare during my study for A levels. We did Othello and King Lear for A levels, and honestly I had a lot of problems throughout my study of Shakespeare in English Literature. I started to become more aware of the richness of those texts when my tutor did an intensive study on them before the exams and soon I started to explore more of Shakespeare such as The Tempest and The Comedy of Errors on my leisure time.  

During my adolescent days I was also swayed into reading Harry Potter Series. My interest in Rowling’s books sparked when I watched the first movie installment. I began to immerse myself in the story of the boy wizard as I was fond of the theme on friendship and family. I was also obsessed with this series partly because of the target audience of the books, and how adolescents can easily relate to the protagonists due to their close age gap with the readers. I also began reading Dan Brown Series (and yes, I am very excited for his new book this May!) and my personal favourites are Robert Langdon’s adventures in Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol.

Somehow during my late teens I got into the Twilight Saga Series. I thought it was an entertaining read as a whole, but honestly as soon as I finished reading the last book, I felt like throwing the book out of the window. Chick flicks aside, I then tried a different genre by reading Haruki Murakami’s novels, which was in eye opener because that was my initial attempt in reading books by Asian writers apart from Singaporean writers such as books by Suchen Christine Lim and Catherine Lim. During my free time, I also read a couple of biographies such as Lee Kuan Yew’s Hard Truth as well as an interesting read of the biography of Shin Dong Hyuk from the book entitled Escape from Camp 14. I enjoyed reading the latter as it gives me an opportunity to unravel the untold and unexplored stories from North Korea, and I began to read up more on their politics as it personally aroused my interest.

Also, my love for drawings and graphics continues till now. This is through my love for reading Japanese comics (manga) and apart from the animation, I enjoy how most of these stories are plot driven and it drives fans crazy to wait for the release of new chapters every week. Every new chapter of the comic reveals or solves many different mysteries, adding to a lot of anticipation despite only lasting for only about twenty pages. It is also very interesting as to how the authors (mangakas) are able to tie loose knots from hundred over chapters ago. There are no rooms for plot holes as fans are the hardest critics that mangaka’s get. Cliffhangers at the end of each chapter are perhaps a device to keep the fans for wanting more.