[Shu Yan] Reading Biography

Some say we are what we eat. Others might add – we are what we read. It is not denied that our experiences shape us, and if we allow that same power to the experiences lived vicariously through the stories we read, then it follows quite simply that to a certain extent, we are what we read.

I would say that quite a bit of who I am and why I think or feel the way I do was shaped by the stories I loved, and still love. I could point to certain books and say “That character used to be my role model” or “That author really changed the way I think”. I used to love reading so much that I would often curl up on a sofa or on my bed with a book, and not move until I’d read it from cover to cover. Even after closing the book and shelving it, if it was any good (and most of the time they are), I would still be reading it mentally or imagining myself in its world. My parents got tired of buying me more books, so I turned to re-reading those I had. With time, the time for such indulgences disappeared, but that desire to read remains. Even now, I feel myself waning if I go too long without a read, much as a runner feels the void when his feet are not pounding the ground, or a traveller homesick for his own land.

C. S. Lewis once wrote that when dipped in a narrative, the important points about reality become more obvious. I think one of the powers of a story is precisely that – that it suddenly makes clear some important truth hidden in the mundaneness of all mundane incidents, that it shows some things with such clarity that it catches your breath and you never see things the same way again. I’ve liked different authors at different stages of my life, but some of the authors that I never get tired of are Lewis, Tolkien, and Milne. However, for the past 5 years, the one author that I almost always turn to when I really need a story for what stories do to me is Terry Pratchett. I could list so many reasons for why it is so, but I’ll just let his words take the place of mine instead for now.

“Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things. Well-known fact.” – Granny Weatherwax, Wyrd Sisters

Here’s wishing joy, happiness, and Terry Pratchett to all.