[Roxanne] My Reading Biography

I'll always remember how I got hooked on reading. It was in Primary 2 and a good friend of mine encouraged me to read a Sweet Valley Kids (now now... don't judge! Remember that I was only 8 at the time!) book and I really enjoyed it. I continued to read more, branching out into Enid Blyton books like The Five Find-Outers, The Secret Seven, Malory Towers and St Claire's. I recall curling up in my bed, reading and re-reading the books voraciously, often refusing to leave my spot till I had finished the story. As I grew older, I read some romance novels and of course, the wonderful Harry Potter books that we all grew up with. Even when I was in Junior College, I would rush to finish reading my A-level texts and I will always remember the inexplicable rush of satisfaction and excitement that I would get from deciphering more of Shakespeare's creative genius. Admittedly, having to read 15-20 books in each semester in University sometimes took the joy out of reading as I no longer read for pleasure but read out of sheer necessity. Having said that, I can't help but admit that many of the books that I was exposed to still gave me some sort of pleasure albeit not as great as those I read in the past.

Perhaps the one real reason why I've always loved reading was because I feel that books are so personal. Reading a book was always an intensely personal and unique experience simply because each reader had an individual and unique response to the story, even if we were reading the exact same story. I'm not sure if any of you are like me but I tend to respond emotionally to stories in books rather than those in the movies despite the visual nature of film and I think it's precisely because a good writer is able to draw out emotions in readers which we may not even be aware of, enabling us to connect deeply with just a simple phrase or sentence, making us feel that these few words which beautifully strung together, seems to encapsulate all that we've wanted to say. As a teacher, I hope to be able to evoke a personal response in my students because I really believe that the best literature student is one who identifies or at least enjoys the story rather than one who is simply capable of memorizing many quotations.