Vincent's Reading Biography: An Exercise of Narcissism

Where do I begin?

Soul Food for the NBA fan

It seems that whenever I compare reading lists with fellow Literature grads, my list gets KO'ed by theirs. While my peers appreciate Kafka, Asimov, Lern, Dickens and Bronte, I satiate my reading appetite with the likes of Jack McCallum, Chris Ballard and Malcolm Gladwell. That's not to say that I've not had my fair share of Lern, Joyce, Tolkein or Conrad, they're not in my top ten right now. Okay, maybe A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is still in the top fifteen.

My reading journey started with my aunt reading stories to me before bedtime. Stories such as the Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk have been burned into my subconsciousness following repeated performances by my radio DJ aunt. Of course, as a child, I usually requested to be read the story again and again, which agitated the hell out of my aunt. Being a Christian, my aunt also told me stories of Samson and his hair, David and Goliath and, interestingly enough, chapters from Revelations that caused my some grief in my formative years.

I don't remember much of my reading habits in my primary school years. The precious few books I remember reading were all written by Roald Dahl, such as Boy, Going Solo, Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The BFG. His Revolting Rhymes actually inspired me to write for the school poetry competition, and that entry won me a bookstore voucher that I remember spending on Chinese manga. The manga, in turn, improved my Mandarin by leaps and bounds, to the point that I was consuming Chinese literature at one point, but that's story for another time.

Great role model: Wee boy turned hero

My teens were spent reading Dune, The Lord of the Rings, Magician and The Sunset Warrior cycle. The science fiction, fantasy and thriller novels went well with the graphic novels, or "rubbish comics" as my grandmother would call them, and that formed my Sunday afternoons during secondary school.

My Junior College years revolved around more serious texts such as Dr. Faustus, Great Expectations and Hamlet, and that was purely for academic purposes. Even so, the studying of the texts piqued my interest in reading even further, inspiring me to read Heart of Darkness after a chance viewing of Apocalypse Now.

My NS years were spent reading "bloke literature", I'm embarrassed to admit. Books by Mike Gayle (My Legendary Girlfriend, Mr. Commitment and Turning Thirty), Lisa Jewell (Ralph's Party, Thirtynothing and One Hit Wonder) and Ben Elton (Inconceivable and Blast from the Past) helped the time pass by more quickly in camp. I'm glad to say that I did complete The Count of Monte Cristo, borrowing the book from the library after watching its film adaptation at the movies.

Then came a period of book gorging.

A heartwarming story intertwined with contact ballet

Maybe it was the university curriculum, maybe it was innate desire to keep up in conversations, maybe it was a self-preservation device (I was, after all, studying three days a week and working the other four, so I had to keep myself sane somehow), I don't know, but I read like never before. The Brontes, Sir Walter Scott, Dickens, Wilde and even bloody Dante Alighieri were speed-read. I enjoyed the science fiction and fantasy module the most, and was thoroughly hooked on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Ender's Game, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Solaris, The Earthsea Quartet (though its now extended to six books), and The Golden Compass. During this time I also took time to consume James Joyce's The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses, David Lodge's Nice Work and Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener.


Working life offers precious little time for books, and I'm afraid to admit that I have been limited to Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers and What the Dog Saw in recent times. I did complete Fight Club, Choke and Rant by Chuck Palahniuk, but only during reservist. Sports literature has been another genre that's been opened up to me since my internships with Mediacorp and ESPN. My stint with Republic Polytechnic opened up a library choke-full of sports book, leading to the completion of The Blind Side, Breaks of the Game, Play Their Hearts Out and Seven Seconds or Less.

Yup, the recent stop in my reading journey is full of non-fiction works, but life stories well told can often be stranger than fiction.