Why I love Literature (by Jean Lee)

My love for literature books developed and grew only in my university days. When I was young, my dad always tried to persuade me to read every single book I could get my hands on. He was always telling me how he once read all the books in his primary school’s library. And I would always believe him half-heartedly. To me, I was just skeptical about how someone would be so interested in books that he would spend so much time and effort reading so many of them.

 In my childhood, the only books that captured my attention were books that featured boarding schools. I guess I craved the idea of going abroad and having the kind of freedom and camaraderie a group of boarding girls shared. So I indulged myself in titles like Malory Towers and the like. It was fun, as I sort of lived vicariously through the characters in the books.  But when I entered secondary school, I put aside all those books, and became drawn into the world of textbooks. There was just no time to pick up a book to read in my leisure time. But fortunately for me, my secondary school forced a morning reading session for us before assembly every Wednesday. Because of that, I had a mandatory time to read. However, the only book I remember of those times is “It’s a Jungle out There” by Ron Snell, if I am not wrong. And when I got to upper secondary, for once, I wanted to take Literature, but sadly, my school didn’t want to offer that subject. Hence, I was stuck with Food and Nutrition. 

The real blessing came when I went to Yishun Junior College. I had a teacher there by the name of Mr Spencer, and it was during my time there that I first developed a strong passion for Literature, courtesy of Shakespeare’s King Lear.

But of course, the best decision in my educational life is definitely the choice I made to join NTU’s English Division. The books that we read there, titles like Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera and 100 years of Solitude, and Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being…they were so amazing that I just fell in love with the words so beautifully written in those books. Nonetheless, John Banville’s books still remain as my favorites. He makes me see the world anew every single time, simply through the way he writes about it. I am currently a new fan of Japanese Literature (authors like Haruki Murakami), and I am hoping to carve out time to read more of Calvino’s and Kundera’s books.:)