Reading List

According to the Guardian, George Orwell’s 1984 is one of the top 10 books people claim to have read (but actually didn’t). I must say, the idea of reading 1984 would never have crossed my mind 10 years ago when all I read were fantasy epics. Now that I’m (supposedly) more mature, I’m glad that I’m expanding my reading list. I started reading contemporary fiction a few years ago, thanks to David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob DeZoet. Prior to reading that book, I never had thought historical fiction could be so engrossing.

Basically, no matter the genre, I like reading books that have these elements: adventure, comedy, good vs evil, and a little bit of romance. I generally stay away from books that are too dark. I would consider Orwell’s 1984 as “dark” but after reading Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84, I was curious about the other “1984”. It doesn’t have the elements of my kind of book but it still captured my attention. It was depressing reading it and the time I read it coincided with my starting work at a large organisation which was not unlike the organisation described in 1984. I suspect my reading the book at that time heightened my discomfort with the organisation I joined.

From there, I read a book I had bought a while back but had never gotten around to reading it: Kaleidoscope: The Memoir of P.G. Lim. Ever since I interviewed her in 2008/2009, I admired her. After reading her memoir, the admiration has grown stronger. She had achieved so much in her life that I could never hope to replicate. She was one of the first few Asian women to study at Cambridge. After graduating, she became a lawyer and then became a UN diplomat. Thoughts of retiring were put on hold when she was offered the job as the director of the Kuala Lumpur Regional Arbitration Centre. There was hardly a dull moment in her life. The memoir was also a revelation because she delved in the country’s pre-Independence days. I’m ashamed that there are a lot of things that happened back then that I didn’t know about. She wrote briefly about the May 13 riots and that was more than what I got from the history books I pored over in school. Some people are of the opinion that the root cause of the riots can’t exactly be pinned down to one factor and her book corroborated that opinion. There were too many elements going on at the time. One thing for sure is that we shouldn’t harp on who was to blame or who suffered the most. We should learn from the past and work for a better future.

After Kaleidoscope, I continued reading L.M. Montgomery’s Anne’s House of Dreams. I can’t remember why I stopped reading it, I like her books. It’s full of drama and humour and wherever Anne is, she can always find the beauty of the place and Montgomery’s writing evokes a sense of realism which makes you feel like you’ve been to that place before. I finished reading it yesterday and as usual, feel sad that I’ve reached the end. There are three more books in the Anne of Green Gables series and since I liked all five books, I think I will get books six and seven. The eighth one is titled Rilla of Ingleside, so it’s obviously not about Anne; I may not read it but we’ll see.

I am now reading Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, coincidentally another book in the top 10 list of books people claim to have read. The beginning was a bit confusing as the author dives right in but after a while, you get the feel of Maycomb County and the people in it. I can’t comment anymore because I really just started this book.