Carmen's Reading Biography

Reading is something that has always been a part of my life, although I did not take Literature as a subject until I was in university. Nevertheless, I would confidently say that reading has sculpted my worldview and influenced my character in a large part. In a world that is increasingly materialistic and practical, I believe that stories are a way to keep ourselves in balance when we allow ourselves to be carried away by our imagination and transported into an entirely different realm.

As a child, Enid Blyton was a staple. Some of the best stories I’ve ever read and still have a deep impression of more than 10 years later are The Faraway Tree and the Famous Five series. Besides her, I was fascinated with animals, so I spent a lot of time reading the entire series of Willard Price as well. I also dabbled with The Hardy Boys, but still favoured Nancy Drew more. I also couldn’t tear myself away from the adventures of Odysseus in The Odyssey, in a children’s adaptation of course.

In my teenage years, I continued reading books like Jung Chang’s Wild Swans and also some Catherine Lim. Of course, the entire Harry Potter series was devoured by me as well. Reading very much was still a favourite hobby of mine, and I think this contributed in part to my scoring good marks for English as well. Even in my ‘O’ level year when things were crazily hectic, I still squeezed out time to read. Thrillers resonated with me at this period of time as well, and Dan Brown was one author whose books I read too.

Unfortunately I didn’t do that much reading in JC. I didn’t take literature as a subject, nor did I have very much time to read. At that point of time in my life, I would just pick out books sporadically from random authors if I went to the library. However, it was also at this later time that I discovered Tolkien’s books, having only watched the movies prior to that. I read The Lord of the Rings and also The Hobbit.

It was in my university days that I really started to read a lot of so called good literary work, being an English Literature major. I fell in love with Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the ideas that he presented, especially in Of Love and Other Demons. Besides him, E.T.A Hoffmann was another author that I really liked, in how he would use fairytale like elements to portray deeper themes. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys also was one of the books that really resonated with me and left a very lasting impression. In a certain sense, I think that particular book did have an impact on the way I thought about relationships and the world. Besides those two authors that I particularly liked, I read many other texts from Shakespeare to Sylvia Plath.

Reading is something that really is done on a personal level, and I think that is one of the aspects of it which fascinates me. The same book can be read by ten different people, and these ten people will have a different interpretation of it, and take away different things from it. In that sense, I think that reading is something which helps cultivate a person’s thoughts and individuality. While reading is fast becoming a luxury, I think that it is at the same time a necessity: people mature from their reading experiences, and this is something that I feel neither movies nor the internet can give.