How I Became a Reader of Books

My friends have the impression that I am 'serious' or 'heavy' reader. They think this because my reading list these days tends towards mostly classic or serious literature, terribly boring current affairs books or Sahara dry philosophy or psychology books. What I found interesting about this impression is how they imagined that in all probability I was also an avid reader read those the entirety of Enid Blyton and Ladybird's catalogue of books in my youth. In short, they thought my reading development from young until now was respectable, diligent and therefore no doubt agreeable. Little did they know that my reading origins were quite sordid and my attitude towards books then was quite deplorable.

Until the age of about 12, the only books I really enjoyed were those with lots of pictures. And if they had Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto and Mickey Mouse in them so much the better. It was still reading right? I mean, if a picture told a thousand words, I was reading lots of words and pretty damn quick too! So the more pictures there were, the better the book. The aesthetic quality of the pictures or cartoons were my primary concern. The present words were merely to assist in making sense of the picture and were entirely optional.

My parents bought me those Enid Blytons and Lady Birds. My dad would extol their virtues to me relishing his anecdotes about how the Famous Five had enthralled him and inspired his reading. I couldn't tell him then, but I felt none of that when I read those books without any pictures. I remember the Famous Five book he brought home for me one day and told me it was his favourite then. So with such high recommendation I set about reading it only to lose interest completely by page 5 before the adventure even started. The damn thing was just too wordy for me. This is probably why I am so impressed with any kid under 12 that doesn't read picture books.

You would think this more ironic if you knew that since my youth, I have always been surrounded by books. In my old house in Damansara Utama, there were a lot of books. My father was and is a book freak and read as much as he bought and he bought a lot. Just outside my room was a tall shelf jam packed with books (the entire Sherlock Holmes collection was stored there with most of the hardcovers) as was the family living room upstairs (that's where the Brittanica Encyclopedia was stored with the other serious fiction) and downstairs in the guest room rounded off the third part of our collection of books. The shelves in my room too had many books but as you would guess by now, they were mostly picture or cartoon books. There was one shelf reserved for those books that I was given but not interested at all. That's where my dad's Famous Five book to me eventually ended up.

My interest in books was awakened by sex. Not that I knew what it was at 12. Back then I still thought people had to get married first before they had a baby. And I must have laboured under the impression that the stork brought me over because I don't recall having any theory about how baby's came about until my literary explorations. All I knew from my sheltered existence then was that people only had babies after they were married. I never troubled my parents with how babies were born or sex. And they never troubled to tell me.

So I'm not quite sure how I came to have this overwhelming curiousity about sex, but possess it in abundance I did at 12. Instead of asking my parent's directly, I thought it best to find this out myself discreetly. I think I did this because even though it was not said outright, I sensed that there was something taboo or forbidden about the topic of sex so asking my parents was out of the question.

I set about educating myself about sex was therefore to turn to our library. I mean if we had so many damn books, there must be something about sex in there. So what I did was to seek out those books in our collection that had a beautiful or sexy lady on the cover with a provocative pose. That image smelled of sex and so I assumed that the book would have something about sex in it. Now as luck would have it, books possessing those covers were authored by Sydney Sheldon, Harold Robbins, Eric van Lustbader, Jackie Collins, and other such writers known for their intensely arousing and completely impossible sex scenes. I still remember one scene from Collin's book 'Lucky' where after the guy brought her to an explosive multi orgasm and ejaculated his spunk into her and then went on to pleasure her some more with a fantastic demonstration of cunnilingus and climaxed with him sucking out his cum from her vagina. Now being a virgin then, I had no comprehension whatsoever about the act but thought it quite impressive all the same because he did not need a straw to get it out. Ah, the ignorance of youth!

Now though I had discovered those books, I did not actually read them in their entirety. I started just flipping pages randomly at first to look for sex. I think it was because I was successful in my first few attempts at finding a scene that I intensified my efforts and slowly became more methodical in my explorations. I would now flip each page of the book and scan each page quickly for words like 'cock', 'breasts', 'fuck' and other such words that would indicate the presence of a sex scene. Once I found it I would dive in like a happy dolphin and swim about for a few paragraphs (or pages if you read Jackie Collins). But the cover method of identifying sex scenes in books though generally successful had its failings as well. Sometimes the damn cover or the title of the book was thoroughly misleading and I would find myself flipping through 300+ pages without even so much as a show of skin. Eventually, I began to realize that sex scenes had to happen by 2/3rds of the book and if there wasn't one by then, there wasn't going to be one nice long multi paged sex scene waiting for me at the end. I refined my methodology with not just my collection but with every book shop I hit and other's people's collections when the opportunity presented itself. I also came to realize that at the bookshops my life was actually made easier because there were other filthy minded bastards like me around who sought out such books and homed in on the sex scene. I don't know whether it happens these days, but if you look at the spine of authors like Jackie Collins, you will notice creases at certain areas. It was those creases that indicated that those particular areas were accessed more and held open longer than others. And voila! that's where the sex scenes generally were.

By this time of course I knew what sex was all about but found myself taking immense pleasure in reading the sex scenes. I even fancied myself a connoisseur and could anticipate the quality of sex scene of the various writers.

My methodology came under severe review one day when I was browsing one of those type of 'perused' books that we also had at home. I forget which it was now, but what I noticed was that the spine crease on the book at the shop indicated 4 sex scenes whereas to my recollection of the book I had at home, I only found 3 sex scenes. Despite my page by page scan I still missed out a sex scene! How could this be? I quickly opened the book to the 4th visible crease and there it was - the 4th sex scene that eluded me. Though it was not terribly memorable or outstanding in quality, this seriously casted doubt on the thoroughness and accuracy of my methodology and left me feeling insecure; insecure because there may be many more sex scenes that I may have left out in my previous explorations.

It was about that time that a cousin of mine who was staying with me lent me Virginia Andrew's 'Flowers in the Attic'. If you don't know what the story was about, it was about 2 brothers and 2 sisters who were kept in the attic by a mean relative and how they coped. Incest was therefore definitely on the agenda. And incest = sex scene. So it was game on.

When I was passed the book, I contemplated trying out my methodology again but with greater focus and concentration. But I think that episode made me cast serious doubt on my abilities that I thought that the best way to make sure I don't miss out on any of the sex scenes was to read the whole damn thing. And that's what I ended up doing and that I think is the first work of fiction that I read in its entirety. And though I wouldn't read any more of her stuff, I thoroughly enjoyed the book then. I went on to devour all of her books after that though I can't remember any of them now. And after I was done with her, my reading development exploded and I just couldn't read enough. However, my genre however was still questionable and limited to the heavily sex scened books. A few years later, I graduated to the classics mostly from the French side with classics by Dumas, Maupassant, Laclos, Rostandt and Flaubert. Dumas' 3 Musketeers was the first book that I finished in double time. I holed myself in my room over a weekend and remember finishing that book at about 3am in the morning. I could not sleep until I had finished the book and after doing so wished I could start it all over again.

Soon after, I moved into contemporary fiction and stayed there for a long time, occasionally dipping into the classics so I could gauge the general quality of the former. I could not read non-fiction then even when I hit University. I could take the boring legal crap but textbooks, current affairs, essays, etc. were all out of the question. Funnily enough, it as only after I came back and worked for a year that I began to take an interest in non-fiction. I think it started with Scott Peck's 'The Road Less Travelled' and carried it on from there.

Nowadays, whilst I usually prefer non-fiction, whether it is a current opinion/affair book, or one about science, or the original texts of the groundbreaking books, to fiction. And the supreme irony now being that I abhor sex scenes in my literature and think them almost embarassing these days (unless it was there for a meaningful purpose and not merely as a masturbatory stop). One of those exceptions to the rule is Cleland's 'Fanny Hill' which I get a huge kick out of reading because of the antiquated language used to describe nasty sex scenes. Careful though, it might give you a boner or wet your panties (or both!).

Having reflected on this, I have concluded that there are many ways to discover the joys of reading and that sordid beginnings need not necessarily continue forever that way. I realize now that for me, if it were not for that curiousity about sex, it is likely that I may have developed an interest much much later or perhaps not even at all, which I think to be the greater tragedy. Jackie Collins was necessary for me to get in touch with Francis Bacon. So for that I thank all those writers of sex scenes both famous and obscure for facilitating my reading development and saucily and sensually ferrying me over to my current stage. And know that books should not be judge by its cover or its introduction or sex scene.

Book Stocking in Malaysian Bookstores

Of this I am certain. At least 95% of the people working in bookshops in Malaysia don't really read. And when I say read I mean current affairs, serious or classic fiction and other non-fiction books like psychology, history, physical science, philosophy, etc. instead of magazines with more pictures than words (except adult men's magazines - those need as few words as possible and most tasteful close ups) and those books devoid of anybody's time. The truth is I am usually amazed that most of the books in our local bookstores are shelved right. But you can tell whether the staff are reading or not if you look closely at the shelves.
A person who reads tend to be particular about where books are placed. So I'm fessing up - I hate to see books put in their wrong place. It annoys the piss out of me. So one shite day when I saw the above book in that place, I snapped. Actually, it was more like a crackle but I thought snapped sounded a bit more dramatic but seemed to hint at violent intent of which I had absolutely none. But anyway, maybe I shouldn't have gone over to the bookstore after a long day. It was one of those weeks you just want to survive through. I thought I was coming in here for a little M&A (Manga and Alternative).
And just as I was heading out of The Borders branch at The Curve, Mutiara Damansara, almost breaking into full stride with head leading the body, afraid that if I lingered any longer the pile of books would be like a magnet to those other books, sucking them into my basket, I made a break for the cashier. So beginning from the Philosophy section at the North East corner of the store, I rounded the bend and there about to launch into a full stride when out of the corner of my eye, I saw the above. I mean like, if there was a book police right there I'd write the report. Jail those illiterate bastards.
Now I've read the book. So I know that firstly, it is not 'self-help' in a sense that it is to help you help yourself. No, it is more self-help for the author, now he's got a regular source of income and some claim to fame as a 'writer' (we have a low threshold of what constitutes writers in this country). So it should not be there. And check it out, where is the Self-Help section housed under? The goddamned Psychology column. And look how prominent it is almost three quarters of a bookshelf! Talk about far off, these guys were up Uranus. And if you think there was nothing to help these Uranians, the subtitle of the book was "In Good Faith: Articles, Essays and Interviews". I was thinking, how on earth did it occur to these aliens that it should be slotted there.

I was so annoyed that I went straight to the customer service counter and told them of the offence. I tell ya Jed if I had 'em cuffs, I would have read them their raghts (to be read with a thick Southern I screwed my cousin accent). The guy at the counter got all worried about what I was worked up about. Even though he appeared to have heard everything I said about the book and how it was inappropriately placed, he understood nothing. I could have been speaking to him in Uranian and he still would not know any better. So I pointed at him with my index finger and then pulled it in as I pointed my thumb at me and motioned him to follow me. He managed to grab a more senior assistant on the way there (he was coming towards us) and together the three of us made our way down to the crime scene. I pointed at the book, opened it, and read the back to them to prove to them that the book was not stocked in the right place. They asked me where they should stock it. So I saw that just opposite that column is the 'Malaysiana' corner and pointed there. They nodded pensively and then very politely asked me to wait at the customer service so they could get their manager to come see me.
The poor chap came running down and almost out of breath when he got to me and hurriedly ask if I was the author of the book. Hilarious. I told him I wasn't and then he seemed befuddled. He then asked me what was wrong with the place where it was put. At least he understood the human English language. He was very nice about it and said he will move it accordingly and thanked me for my alertness. It's a damn shame these poor chaps don't take an interest. I think one turn around the bookstore just before opening in the morning will cut down the more glaring errors. I wish there was one bookstore in Malaysia that was immaculate but I cannot. I have time and time again found errors in all the major bookstores in the Klang Valley.
I don't think we are anywhere like those Australian, English or American bookstores where the staff read a fair bit themselves and give personal recommendations that they pin up next to the book and explain why they enjoyed it, especially for less heavily marketed books, which I absolutely love. These bookstores are immaculate and you tend to find some very interesting and compulsive books that you may not have read about or that has appeared in any chart list. In those countries, I love those huge book marts and especially those cozily run independent stores that have a charm all of their own and their book selection to be very thoughtful and cultured. And you will never find Zaid Ibrahim's book shelved in the psychology section.
Unless, those Uranians know something that I don't.
Goddamned aliens.

Reading the Thickie

Bloody Thick Book; A Thickie

I love to read. There's little that I enjoy reading - be it of any topic, whether it is about the uses of a corpse to the literature of Steinbeck to Sade, Achebe, Kawabata, Palahniuk to the philosophy colletions by Grayling (for the twenty minute philosophical brief), Hume, Kierkegaard to the anthologies of Coplestone and Russell to the meanderings of Ruskin to the studies of Winnicott, Postman and Holt to unadulterated filthy gutter porn to the essays of Hazlitt, Bacon and White to clothes labels, cereal boxes, computer equipment packaging to promotional pamphlets given and found. But my love for reading is without its Achilles Heel: the Thickie.

Thickies are defined as books with more than 400 pages of heavy denseness (many sentences per page) set in a small and austere font. These books usually have ugly page aesthetics. When you open the page, what you see in the page are not clean, precise and accurate depictions of alphabets arranged according to their groups and these in turn arranged in sentences of sufficient width (which combine to create a pattern of white and black on the page that is aesthetically pleasing when seen from a reasonably readable distance), you just see a thin, jagged line scurrying across the page leaving a daunting looking sentence. And when all of these hideous lines are put close to each other, they look like some sinister code that when recited would unleash the forces of evil upon earth and I would have to do battle with them and eventually triump over them in my leopard skin loin cloth, velvet red cape (that only stretches half way down my back), my sword forged by Zeus on one of his drunken bouts and a motorcycle helmet (nobody makes those iron helmets with spikes anymore) with a Hello Kitty sticker stuck on the right side. [Note to self: start working out so body looks good in battle outfit. Split one pack to eight pack so loincloth and cape can also be washed on stomach].

Worse are those books that use paper that are really supposed to be used on frilly lingerie. Some of them are so thin as to be transparent that when you turn the page, if you focused your eyes intensely enough (like men are wont to do with finely built women in whatever clothing), you can even see the printed words and setences on the opposite side. I can understand the use of it by budget publishers and for budget books but this sort of quality paper is simply unacceptable for books, of whatever thickness or thinness. After all, how is one supposed to use the damn book when one is stuck in the toilet without any tissue paper and no friends around nearby to get that roll of toilet paper for you? Paper like that can barely hold print, it sure as hell ain't holding shit.

But despite my issues with thickies, that does not mean that I don't attempt them or even on rare occasions finish them. I just have to go through an elaborate pre-reading ritual before I commence the book. Depending on the thickness, length and hardness (of the writer or writing), it takes up to about 2 - 3 weeks before I begin books of such volume.

The first thing I do is to read a few shorter books in quick succession. These are books of excellent writing and inevitably tend to be classics. The reason for this is to build up my reading stamina and appreciation. Stamina is gained from reading several books in quick succession and the different books are to help keep things interesting or prevent the exercise of reading from being too monotonous. It is important for me to read good books so that my benchmark for quality is set and fresh in my mind when I attempt the thickies. These books are also important in helping me practise my appreciation of the plot, dialogue, themes and style of writing - and perhaps to see if there are resonances in the thickies with some of the great novels of literature.

The second thing is to place the book in a place where I would see it often or regularly. This is to affix in my mind that I will be attempting that book soon. It is like the climber that sits in some Swiss cottage in some funky sounding Swiss village near the Alps on a cool spring day out in his garden blowing on his cup of freshly brewed coffee whilst basking in the magnificence of the jagged snowcapped mountain range, toying in his mind how he would climb it. So the idea is something like that even though the reality is nothing like that. What usually happens is I just put the book on my study table and can't help but see it because of its size. And what you see everyday becomes less daunting and smaller even as time goes by.

The third thing is to 'flip it'. To flip it would be to pick up the book and feel the weight of it resting on your hands; to smell the earthiness of its pages by gently spreading it wide and then dipping your nose carefully right down the middle and inhaling deeply; caressing the pages to feel its texture - smooth as a virgin's or sticky traction like a lover's skin after several bouts of love making; turn to the front to see just how much introductions, preface and table of index has to offer and then to the back to check the booty and see what extras they have as back up - endnotes, references, bibliographies, interviews with the author and further reading recommendations; then determining just how many pages I will be actually reading; if the book is tempting enough, I may be even tempted to read a few lines here and there just to taste the book - which may whet my appetite for more.

Finally, there is the inevitable reading. The conditions must be optimal before I start this book. And whilst I don't consult a feng shui guy or get a colonic irrigation before I start, the environment in which I begin the book must be pleasant and cozy. I definitely cannot commence reading the book whilst taking a dump in the toilet nor in the car while driving to work or even during work. Its not conducive nor convenient. An example of optimal conditions for commencement of a thickie attempt would be perhaps on my sofa in my study with the airconditioning at twenty three degrees centigrade, with a freshly opened can of beer, soft pleasant music (like Norah Jones, John Mayer or Keane) playing unobstrusively in the background, a pencil and eraser on hand, comfortably attired - like a pair of boxers and singlet, and finally a few uninterrupted hours. These days, that sounds like waiting for planets and starts to align to form a shape much like my arse. Which probably explains why I don't read many thickies as I should.

There's also one thing I noticed in the literature kingdom - that most of modern classics of literature tend to be on the short side (unless you are Russian then short is something like less than 1000 pages) - I wonder whether that is because most people are also daunted, don't have the time or are lazy when it comes to reading a thickie. More interestingly, I wonder whether a thickie has any place in this fast paced Internet environment where time is not one or five o'clock but money.

The 'I love Penguin' Soliloquy

Ahem. Ahem.

Out of all the publishers out there, it is Penguin that I love best. To me they have always been solidly staid if a little on the boring side with the spectrum of classic art (including the modern masters) with its equal measure of greatness providing further candy for the eye. But recently they have got me excited again. Those guys in Penguin sure know how to pull my strings (that's purse strings).

I know Penguin have always been for affordability and widespread readership, but I like that they have been also releasing little droplets of literature for some time now. That's, for example, what I call the series from the scrumptuous Great Ideas series (both volumes) which publishes certain extracts of Philosophers (David Hume, Kierkagaard, Sun Tzu, Seneca for example) and Writers (Orwell, Hazlitt, Swift, Woolf) in a small book often not more than a hundred over pages for a very affordable price. Here you have some awesome piece of writing come through the ages to you for only a measly fee of RM 19.90 (some are pricier, don't understand why) which is sometimes more than half of what a magazine these days costs.

For example, I had the fortune of reading Cicero's 'Attack on the Enemy of State' which I have to say was a rather mind blowing experience. 'Amongst the most famous and influential of all political polemics, Cicero's scathing speeches against the dictatorial ambitions of Mark Antony are the passionate last testament of the greatest statesman of his age; a final attempt to restore his beloved Republic that was to cost him his life,' sums up Penguin themselves on their website. So inspired was I after reading that book that I wanted to read more of him and purchased a collection of his famous speeches (which were really his arguments in certain cases). There is one thing that I learned from Cicero is that you must turn over every little piece of fact and consider it, weigh it, test it and see where it may assist in your argument. The thoroughness with which he considered every meaningful facet of the case was simply awe inspiring. Now when you think about that and the fact that he lived about two thousand years ago, you begin to feel a strange comforting sense of humility. And sometimes even hope, because you realize that once upon a time we did have great men who were willing to sacrifice themselves in the service of their State. Men who once upon a time, asked not what our country could do for us, but what we could do for our country. That such men existed before means that they could walk this earth again. When you read this book, try to imagine yourself, as one of those nervous cowering Senators somewhere in the Senate with an armed Roman guard by your side ready to slay you at the flick of a wrist. Then imagine the courage one needed to have to launch a polemic against Mark Anthony at the height of his power. Can you imagine how potent this little baby is? And at such dirt cheap prices. Pick any one of them you can't go wrong.

And so it was with their 70s Pocket Penguins released in conjunction with its 70th anniversary (mmmm), then there was the Mythology Series (who said old ancient texts and myths were boring? Siegfried's Murder rocked!), the new classic travel writing series and what I wanted to gush about, their 'Read Red' series. This has been a refurbished line where they have reprinted an eclectic collection of the best shorter novels of from both the classic and modern masters. I've been collecting them and enjoying all of them. They've also reprinted one of my all time favourites, Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck (I like to pet nice things with my fingers, sof' things) in a nice portable format. I can tuck it away on my back left pocket. And introduced me to some great writers like Stefan Zweig's perfect 'Chess: A Novella' and Eduard Morike's picturesque 'Mozart's Journey to Prague'. And if you want full on German romance have a go at Goethe's 'The Sorrows of Young Werther' (would not advise severely depressed people to read it).

And the part I love about all these series is that they are affordable and let me taste a whole range of writers, philosophers, political thinkers without having to commit myself over their entire argument or doctrine. Each of them opens up whole new worlds to explore. Even just stopping by with them for those hundred over pages would leave you in some way cleverer than you were before or showed you insight or a different view of life for that moment. I cannot think how anyone can be the poorer for reading them. Thank you, Penguin.

Stage direction: Curtain Falls.

Cue: 'A Whole New World' by Peabo Bryson and Reginal Belle during the chorus.

'Read not to contradict or confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.' - Francis Bacon, Essays.

Reminiscing the Bookstore

I love bookstores. Absolutely adore them. New ones are like mysterious strangers. Favourite ones like close family. Even in foreign non-English speaking countries, I would try to search out a bookstore, any bookstore. I don't care how small the shop, how impoverished the collection, how frigid the storekeeper, or that there are no English books at all. I don't even care if it's those local 'fake bookstores' which have more magazines and stationary than books (and even then, most of them are cookbooks and primary and secondary school workbooks and books that make you wonder how they ever saw print). I would go in even knowing full well that I would be disappointed. That's how compulsive I am where bookstores are concerned. Why you may ask? Because you would never what you may find. And I am always looking to find just that very book that would strengthen, fortify and enrich my collection. Or rather that's what say to palliate myself.

The sight of pages bound together between two hard covers is for me an icon of civilization. Just the sight of it makes me feel glad. Safe, almost. Perhaps that is why I look for bookstores whenever and wherever I travel overseas. Finding them is like discovering I share a deep and profound communion with this foreign civilization. Different, but civilization all the same. Books to me are what daffodils are to Wordsworth. Except I wouldn't be wandering lonely as a cloud. I know exactly where my destination lay and would bear down upon it like the wolf on the fold.

The books displayed at the front of the shop is telling of the management, or whoever it is in charge of book purchasing and the display. Smaller and second hand bookstores on balance tend to display more interesting types of books that you may not find at those chain bookstores. That's because the owners and storekeepers tend to actually read the books and know their stuff. The chain bookstores tend to just put the bestsellers, latest releases and promotions (though to be fair, Kinokunya's Gems of the Month recommendations are a genuine attempt to educate and promote the better works on offer). The more unusual though clever the selection displayed, the more interestingly eclectic on offer for sale inside. Those hidden gems that you discover while trying to find your way back down an unintended alley or turning are the best. Purchasing a book from such a bookstore made you feel like a successful explorer, like one that has just discovered a whole new continent.