Nad's Book Journey

I grew up believing that reading would improve the way I speak and write but till today, I asked myself if it ever did. I don’t remember exactly when I started reading but I am very certain that my first books were those of the Ladybird Classics. Growing up two older sisters, I saw them reading books and it seemed natural to just pick a book and read (or pretending to read because I don’t know the words). The pre-school me really enjoyed Goldilocks and the Three Bears and would get either my parents or sisters to read it to me. I guess I liked that book because it doesn’t involve one lone princess waiting to be saved by a prince. But the one book that I’ve always wanted to read was Rumpelstiltskin, of which I finally read when I was eight. My mother hid the book from me because she thought the image of it was too awful that she said I would get nightmares!

Moving on to primary school, I read because my teacher told me I would fail English if I don’t. I wasn’t the brightest kid in the class so she made me read. That was when my mother bought me Beatrix Potter’s series and Enid Blyton. I love books with a little bit of magic in them. I knew it was impossible but somehow, it gave me a sense of hope that things will get better. Then came the ‘era’ of the Sweet Valley series. There were too many titles that the girls in my primary 3/ 4 class would share our collection. We came up with a Book Loan form to keep track of who has borrowed which title (actually, my teacher came up with the idea because she saw that we didn’t have any system that can keep track of where our books went). In between, I started reading Roald Dahl. I love Charlie and the Chocolate’s Factory then but I still do now. And I like Matilda too. At this point in time, I realised that the books that I read revolve around children of my age. I guess it allows me to relate to the characters and at the same time, imagine what it is like elsewhere in the world.

I still continued reading Roald Dahl and Judy Blume when I was in secondary school. However, my friends introduced me to Phyllis Reynold Taylor’s Alice series. We would go to Tampines Regional Library and borrow the entire collection and laughed together at the protagonist awkwardness. And of course, I started to read the J.K Rowling Harry Potter series. It was also in secondary school that I read my older sister’s Literature set texts because I don’t know what else to read. In particular, I like Elizabeth Laird’s Red Sky in the Morning. My eldest sister shared her love of reading with me and that was when I knew I would take the subject that allows me to ready storybooks (so I though).

Now, I can read books of any genre but not those really cheesy romances. Just two years ago, I started reading Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and I wondered why I didn’t read them. Even then, I read it because it was one of the required readings for a Fantasy Literature module. It is also in University that I am exposed to a repertoire of books and authors. But one thing I realised, I don’t quite enjoy books that are of the same genre as Jeannette Winterson. I would rather read an Austen, a Dickens or even, a Shakespeare.