“To read is to fly: it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries.”
AC Grayling, Financial Times (in a review of A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel)
Since young, reading has been something I truly take pleasure in. It is the platform through which I ascertain a lot about life and living and it has also opened my eyes to not just the exquisiteness and splendour of imagination and narrative but also exposed me to the brutality and complexity of the everyday life, something which we very often dismiss and choose to plainly disregard. As the quote read, “to read is to fly...” reading permits me to soar above the mundaness of everyday living and this very much shapes my character and individuality up till this day.
When I was much younger, I never did really fancy fairy tales (snow white, sleeping beauty, Cinderella etc) for a simple reason that they appear to me as too simplistic. Despite the fact that my parents bought many of such story books for me and I will be thrilled upon receiving a new book to read, I can never run away from questioning the plot of these fairy tales. This very often led me to overlook the messages and values imbued in the stories until much later.
It was this constant questioning that directed me to discover true horror stories as a better substitute to the “simplistic” fairy tales. I began to be in love with Russell Lee’s True Singapore Horror Stories and many more of the same genre. It presented to me not just the excitement and thrill but also the very fact that these stories were personal recounts and happen in the everyday world we live in. It is to me something that made more sense and not just relying on the expectation of a happy ending to take place. From here, I began to be exposed to more genres and thankfully, fairy tales no longer was part of the “required” text that my parents bought for me. I began reading Catherine Lim’s short stories and remembered very clearly being very engrossed in her stories simply because it was something I could very well connect to due to the local element prevalent in her stories and I felt that I began to be more aware of the what is happening around me.
It was Catherine Lim’s stories that instil this love to read not just stories that are fictive in nature but more importantly the love for personal recounts and stories that are based on personal experiences and true cases. Jean Sasson’s range of personal recounts became my all time favourite up till this day. These stories taught me so much about life and the brutality that it sparks of interest my wanting to deal with issues of power struggle, feminism and inequality in the everyday living thus leading to my major. Through the presentation of these recounts, I began to consciously aware of the kind of world we live in. I particularly love exploring the different cultures, livelihood, experience and emotions through these stories and I feel that it provides the best insights into the lives of others, presented through their very own experience. However, such stories do at times instil a negative vibe that gets me worked up and very stressed out because I become aware of the negative situation but there is nothing that I can do to help these people get out from these situations. When such situation rises, I turn to reading fiction and particularly “chick-flick” novels that provides me with the escapism from the brutality of the earlier.
Reading as such, is my perfect companion and one that “gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries”.
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