On My Reading History and How to Keep the Passion Burning

The reading frenzy came back to me about a month ago. It came in such an unlikely circumstance which completely caught me off guard, and that had me thinking about reading once more. Things like the growth of character and honesty, and sometimes about how to keep the passion burning instead of having it put out for the past 6 years.

Maybe because I save my own money for my reading list, I always have a tendency to buy only books which are useful in the long run, and not simply for leisure or pleasure. I love reading, always do. I think since Form 3 at an age of fourteen (I was admitted into school a year earlier than my peers) I noticed my parents do not have big money to spend, and to spend thriftily means to spend on things necessary. On that note I started to save the meager pocket money my mum gave to me every school day (RM 3 or USD$ 1.20 ten years ago) for break meal for books and music. Yes I didn't eat for the few years in high school. Occasionally I did. Usually I didn't. Then at the end of Form 5 I started to teach tuition and took up part-time job as a cashier in nearby store to get the burden off my mum's shoulders. Since then I was on my own till now, spending my own money, on textbooks, meals, petrol etc. If there was any money left, you bet you would surely invest it upon something useful. Something which would make you grow instead.

That in fact, is how my adolescent years were. To buy books which were useful, that always meant non-fiction. To save it up even more, I bought pirated chinese books. The quality was always fluctuating. Some of them you could actually spot that few patches of missing ink and also the obvious photo-stating paper. Some of them were very, very original-like. Even today, I seldom see any pirated english books. That's more the reason why I read a lot of translated stuff those days. I hate translated stuff. They always leave those important terms and concept convoluted in the process of translation, and I spent most of my breaks in between reading to think what the author in his native tongue actually meant. Although this experience trained me to think out of the box and also to judge logically along the line of thought laid bare by the text, it was excruciating.

When my passion of reading came back, it was E.O. Wilson's "The Social Conquest of Earth". I discovered this title through an out-of-the-blue bookstore browsing, which I haven't done more than 5 times in the past 6 years. I bought it on a whim and I enjoyed it greatly. Then the gripping pleasure of reading is back, and I went on with another non-fiction by a Taiwanese Lung Ying Tai, then to my horror I noticed my pleasure in reading suddenly subsides. I mean, I need to constantly encourage myself to keep reading, and that will definitely transform into boredom later. I thought it was the author or the content, but when I tried another Murakami's collection of serious essays I faced the same feeling again. I think to myself, no way. What had exactly happened?

Like what you read before, I trod the history of my very own reading years and I thought some time after the years of heavy non-fiction, I began to burn out. Even for fiction, it was King Lear by Shakespeare which I was reading. It was too much. The only few joys I had was Jin Yong's books, and also the Harry Potter series, which the Jin Yong I bought mostly from pirated bookstore and Harry Potter series were borrowed from my friends. I didn't realize back then. But I burned out. 6 years of non-fiction everyday was too much for me.

I mused upon this, and I realized that I need to balance the books out. Non-fiction then fiction then history then fiction then biography and so on and so forth seems to be a good. In fact, it's far much better. I quickly purchased Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat Pray Love" and I finished it in 5 days. Then Paulo Coelho's "Aleph". Then Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational". Then Stephen King's "11.22.63", and now on his expanded "The Stand" borrowed from the library, all under a month. And not counting the various Murakami and Lung Ying Tai's serious essays I read occasionally, or Time or Fortune magazines, or The Illiad. It was crazy, a reading frenzy which surpassed my past record with a great lead up front. 

Not only that, I found passion reading scientific papers and reports in my research field now too. Inspirations are coming by the hand and I could formulate thoughts more easily. I have revelations now and then when I saw some news or heard some experience relayed by friends or during reading, because these non-fictions and fictions suddenly draw a good picture in my mind, mapping themselves to the concepts, the events, the stories which happened to explain each other. I realized how important this is, not just to make reading a bearable and fun experience, but too the knowledge which reinforces each other, be it fiction or non-fiction.

I guess now I earn my own bucks and have more than enough to spend, I decided to break myself free of the thought that books have to be educational and useful in the long term. I was so wrong. If you care to select good titles which have a good mix of fiction and non-fiction, you would live a fulfilling life of lifelong learning and interweaving perspectives on the myriad of life itself, instead of having yourself trapped to the boring or narrowed lens of non-fiction.