A Brief History of My Reading Years

My primary school days were spent with Usborne, Tin Tin, Nancy Drew, Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton. I also read copious amount of fables and filial piety stories set in Asia. Those stories subconsciously shaped my understanding of moral values and underscored to me that there was right, wrong and consequences in the world that we all lived in.

It was also an age for facts and wonderment. I wanted to know what had happened to the world before I was born. I was curious to know how old the earth was, if the Dead Sea had more salt than Indian curries, who built the Babylonian towers or if the Romans took a bath. I wolfed down every title that answered the who, what, where, when and how because those were the questions that dominated my conversation with peers and adults. It was just so much fun turning up to the dinning table to tell a tired mother that China invented silk.

I have little memory of what I read during my early teenage years. I can only clearly recall two books: Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex and Georgette Heyer’s The Corinthian. I was at a stage in my life when I was deciding on my own likes and dislikes. These two books were, essentially, about staying true to oneself. I was fourteen when I read Middlesex. Now thinking back, it is clear that as I entered adolescence, the private and public spheres had become distinct and the choice of books mattered even more because I perceived them as an extension of my identity.

In polytechnic, I became more independent. It was a new school, a new environment, and a new set of friends. The newly found independence created a yearning in me to return to my childhood days of epistemological inquiry. School life was about science, formulas and dichotomies. I didn’t want to continue learning about the world through the microscope. My favourite books during those years were from Introducing Books. I carried these pocket-sized graphic books with me during morning travels to school. I wanted to understand the discourses prevalent in the society that I lived in. I also reverted to my nascent love for reading history. I remember reading the history of science and art, and the biographies of scientists and painters. Some of my favourite books from this period were a biography of Descartes, the history of the golden mean, D. H. Lawrence's Sons & Lovers, Rumi poetry and David Hewson's Nic Costa series.  After childhood, my polytechnic years were my most fertile reading period. By the end of polytechnic, I was no longer a teenager, and I was secretly hoping that among the books that had held my attention, one would show me where my strength lied or who I was to become.

Among the books that I read during my university days, three books take the top spot: Heminway’s The Sun Also Rises, Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera. But there were two books that I loved reading a lot but always slip my mind when I have to mention favourites. They were Tash Aw’s Harmony Silk Factory and Zora Neal Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. I really liked how Aw told the protagonist Johnny Lim’s story by remixing historicity with modernist narrative motifs. Whereas, Their Eyes Were Watching God, has one of the most memorable and charismatic characters from Afrcian-American literature: Tea Cake. He was a bittersweet burden to both the protagonist, Janie Crawford, and me, the reader. Reading during my university days was no longer an exercise to understand myself. Instead, I found myself enjoying reading because it was a means to empathise with others and to understand the frailty and joys of the human existence.

When I began working, I read fiction far and few in between hours of perusing work-related material. For proper, lengthy reading, my favourite websites were The New York Times, Architectural Digest, Brain Pickings, Slate, Fast Company, Smithsonian, Colors Magazine, Ralph Lauren / Dior Magazine and Vulture. I rarely read anything in print in those two years.  Almost all of my readings were non-fiction and took place online.

My reading selection is now very much dependent on what pops up on my Twitter or Facebook feed. I follow a few interesting journalists and commentators such as Venkat Ananth and Karthik Srinivasan (@venkatananth, @beastoftraal) on Twitter.  Venkat shares plenty of interesting #longreads from different sources. Most of the days, he is the one who decides what I end up reading for leisure. After entering teaching, I am compelled to incorporate fiction back into my reading diet. I think I will start with The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton.