Andrea's Reading Biography

I enjoyed reading as a young child and my mother always credited herself for that. Because I am the oldest child, she had the luxury of time to read to me and that, perhaps, helped inculcate a love for reading in me. On top of that, my older cousin was a voracious reader and thankfully, I inherited many of his books which definitely helped expand the scope of my reading.

In my primary school days, I would spend time after school reading and re-reading many of my favorites, such as The Witches, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Esio Trot, The Twits and The BFG by Roald Dahl, as well as the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The Little House series was, and is, and will always be one of my all-time favorite; after reading each book, I would revel in my own fantasies of running free on the prairie as Laura did, or chasing gophers, or helping Pa build the log cabin or Ma do chores around the house. I also enjoyed reading Enid Blyton, though I was largely unconscious of the many racist representations in characterization, the Bookworm Club series, as well as a couple of stories by Great Illustrated Classics, such as the The Time Machine, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, The Fall of the House of Usher, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Three Musketeers, Oliver Twist, Little Woman and Secret Garden. The strangeness of stories such as The Time Machine really affected me though I was too young to articulate or understand why I felt the way that I did; I was enthralled yet disturbed by the utopian/dystopian/ Gothic themes. Perhaps that is why I felt so “enlightened” when I studied Paper 4: Imagining Other Worlds in Junior College where I finally understood the significance of those texts and their thematic concerns. Apart from fiction, I really enjoyed reading encyclopedias or collections of factual knowledge about anything and everything! The love for facts and history is probably influenced by my father, who used to work onboard a ship where he did mechanical and engineering work. Because he traveled the world and experienced so many cultures, my father always got amazing stories to tell of people, history, culture and even food! Even though my parents were not conscious of influencing my reading interests and are not really aware of the English literary canon, I am thankful that in their small ways, they helped to develop a positive perspective in me towards the act of reading and learning. (Other books read during this period include books based on popular TV series such as Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Charmed etc.)

In secondary school, I began reading more comics such as The Archie comic series and some popular Japanese manga.  More serious reading would include The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Sherlock Holmes series by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Chinese Cinderella by Adeline Yen Mah etc. Self-help books also became one of my favorites because secondary school days were a period where I was struggling to fit in, to cope with my studies, make friends and keep them.

It was only in Junior College where I really enjoyed and understood the mechanics behind reading. We studied poetry and prose by Edgar Allen Poe, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and a whole range of other authors and works. Studying literature in university further expanded the scope of my reading across genres and time periods. My overseas exchange experience also allowed me to come into contact with Canadian literature. Overall, my reading journey is still expanding bit by bit as I grow in understanding of the intricacies of learning and reading literature.