At the age of 3, I regret not carefully considering how much learning to read would affect my life. It started off innocently enough; The Adventures of Asterix, The Adventures of Tintin, Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl and classics such as, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Around the World in Eighty Days, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Gulliver’s Travels,Oliver Twist, Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, were devoured at the old Marine Parade library.
“You are human and mortal; we are the sum of our weak moments and our strong.”
Mercedes Lackey, The Black Gryphon
Certainly, I should have been alarmed that the Mercedes Lackey fantasy novels I read in Primary 5 through to Lower Secondary, were endorsing multiculturalism,gender equality and LGBT relationships. All I cared about was the talking gryphons and horses with magical powers. Incidentally, there were some important human characters like the mages and Heralds.
“I didn't particularly feel like being arrested, so I argued with the soldiers a bit. Several of them died during the argument - those things happen once in a while. Unfortunately, one of the casualties was Taur Urgas' oldest son. The king of the Murgos took it personally. He's very narrow-minded sometimes. - Silk”
David Eddings
In secondary school, the Belgariad series through to the Tamuli series foisted an appreciation for irony, dry humour and the idea of truth being subjective. Of course,I can’t entirely blame David Eddings for robbing me of my childhood purity. My English teachers deserve some of the credit too. They made me read books such as Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four,To Kill a Mockingbird,The Diary of a Young Girl, The Alchemist,The Teenage Textbook and The Teenage Workbook.
Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers, The Man in the Iron Mask and The Count of Monte Cristo, C.S Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, J.R.R Tolkien's The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, also managed to sneak their way into my reading diet.
Frank Herbert, Dune
Post-secondary education marked the decline of reading for pleasure. My peers were into MMOs like GunBound and MapleStory and it wasn’t long before I joined them online. Eventually I ventured to other MMOs, mostly MMORPGs. Thinking about why I drifted towards MMORPGs, I guess reading and the love of stories wasn’t going to let go so easily, even if it meant they couldn’t trap me in print. I didn't totally devolve into illiteracy though. The Dune and BattleTech series were my redemption.
National Service did however succeed in making me a reading degenerate.
While I learnt a great number of things during my time as a conscript, it would take university to rekindle my love for reading for the sake of reading. Tadeusz Borowski’s This Way for the Gas,Ladies and Gentlemen, was the first book that mentally and physically discomforted me. To this day, I feel uneasy when I think about that book because it sums up Hannah Arendt’s “Banality of Evil” concept for me.
Fortunately, I rediscovered David Eddings and The Chronicles of Narnia in the university library and in the process of re-reading, picked out all the subtle meanings and humour I had missed as a child.
After graduation, John Green became a name in my mental literary list. The world was alright once more...sort of. These days, I don’t get to read outside of academic literature much- lammmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmme!
I hope to one day have the free time to scurry down a comfortable hobbit hole and be alone with my Kindle (Gasp! What about that book smell??).
See what picking up reading does?
Hey Ashley! I concur with your point about academic readings: LAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!! Yikes! Indeed, what about the book smell?!!! *shudders in mock horror* HAHAHAHAHA!!! Interestingly, university resulted in a decline in my reading. The crazy amount of readings I had to complete each week all meant that I couldn’t read for pleasure. :/ I really like how you mentioned “reading for the sake of reading.” That really resonated with me for it was only when I couldn’t read for the sake of reading, that my joy of reading was robbed. It really came as a rude shock to me that reading can become a chore! So, like you, I would love to one day find enough time to just sit on my bed and read the whole day away! Now that would be such a lovely way to spend a day!
ReplyDeleteHello Ashley Joseph!
ReplyDeleteOMG I DONT KNOW YOU BUT I READ MERCEDES LACKEYY AND DAVID EDDINGS TOO! I have both the Belgariad and Mallorean and Polgara and Belgarath. And I still read them now it never stops.
Hi Ash, reading is definitely a terrible thing; it makes you think too much. And the beauty of re-reading: you never read the same text the same way, isn't it? Amazing how a book's meaning and message resonates more, and how you see more as you read it at different stages of your life.
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