My fondest childhood books were L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series, because my dad spoiled me with all the books I ever wanted and had bought me an omnibus of most of the books in the series. I related to Anne's free spirit and longed for my own Gilbert to find Blythe with. Anne introduced me to the idea of finding "kindred spirits", true friends you can connect with, and her infectious joie de vivre is something I continue to emulate in my own life.
I must admit that I am guilty of the stereotype of reading very "girly" or feminine books; as giddy teenagers, my sisters and I would read lots of romances with racy covers. I soon picked Julia Quinn and her Bridgerton series as my favourites. I also had a steady diet of chick lit which included the likes of Meg Cabot and Sophie Kinsella. Looking back and having studied feminism, I wonder if sex and society's perceptions of what girls or boys should be reading influenced these choices, or if it was all just brainless escapist fun.
In secondary school, I had the privilege of taking Language Arts and discovered science fiction, which my teacher had a soft spot for and had the luxury of including in our syllabus. I particularly enjoyed Isaac Asimov and his 3 Laws of Robotics, E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, texts which introduced me to dystopias and social satire.
Throughout this time I was reading and writing a lot of Harry Potter fanfiction as well. Having inhaled the books and being obsessed with them at a time when Potter-mania was at its peak, I loved the idea of having the magical Hogwarts universe and its characters being played around with. Even though this was all online and wasn't published work, it formed a bulk of what I was reading in my teenage years up to when I quit the fandom in my A Level year. It also got me thinking about the value of online work and the nature of the Internet - whether things meant less just because it was in this intangible other world. I think Nora Ephron's You've Got Mail summed the nature of the Internet up well - "All this nothing has meant more to me than so many somethings". I served as a librarian on an online archive of Draco Malfoy/Ginny Weasley fanfiction, which documented, reviewed and kept track of quality fanfiction. Although some may scoff at fanfiction, I've encountered plenty that are well-written and gripping and continue to be my favourites. Although hardly representative of the high quality of fanfiction available online, perhaps 50 Shades of Grey's commercial success proves that fanfiction is nothing to cough at.
In JC, I took Literature, and there's just something about going so deeply into texts that leaves an impact on you. I loved Austen's Pride and Prejudice, which is a gateway book to becoming an Austen junkie. Austen's language is just so beautiful, and for the semester we were doing the text, my friends and I would (perhaps inappropriately) use phrases like "it is a truth universally acknowledged" (P&P's famous opening lines) and "tolerable but not handsome enough to tempt me" (Darcy's first impression of Elizabeth) to describe anything and everything from boys to food. Out of all the Literature texts we did though, I loved Edgar Allen Poe's the most. I remember reading "The Raven" early in the morning and getting so into the creepy mood that when a friend tapped me on the shoulder, it shocked me so much I screamed in horror. Poe is a genius at creating the Gothic landscape and sucking you into his macabre and twisted worlds. I loved both his poems and prose, my favourite short stories including "The Masque of Red Death" (which has ruined grandfather clocks for me forever) and "The Oval Mirror".
NIE years got me interested in Singapore literature, from Dr Pat Wong's classes. I started reading a lot of Alfian Sa'at, the latest being his book of flash fiction Malay Sketches. The Singapore literature section in the NIE library is now one of my favourite corners in school, and where I started to appreciate Singapore literature a lot more. Now that I think about it, it's a shame it wasn't included more in my Language Arts and JC Literature syllabuses, and I hope that I get to teach more local lit than I was taught.
In sum, you are what you read. From reading escapist fiction to more serious non-fiction, every text we read has the potential to make us either more aware or more critical of the nature of the world we live in, no matter how "brainless" the text may seem. For example, the Twilight books, the most brainless of books, reveals how deeply entrenched female self-victimization and self-subordination is. As such, I think reading is an ongoing process that grows with you and transitions in each stage of your life.
