A lifelong love for reading and in the pursuit of books!

ONE of my earliest memories as a very young boy of about four or five years of age, before even attending school, was of my mother reading to me from a big colourful book of ‘Aesop’s Fables’ – the story could have been ‘The Tortoise and the Hare’, or ‘Little Red Riding Hood’.

Only later on in life did I discover that Aesop was a former Greek slave who had lived in the sixth century and had written a total of 725 fables – mostly a collection of morality tales that were originally told from person to person to teach a moral or a lesson in life.

My lifelong love for books, reading and writing must have started from that wellspring of affection more than half a century ago. Today, it is still being debated about the age at which we can recall our earliest memories – Sigmund Freud found that his patients had difficulty remembering events from before the age of six to eight. Using psychoanalytic theory, he had postulated that early life events were repressed due to their inappropriately sexual nature.

He had then coined the phrase ‘childhood amnesia’ and the word ‘infantile’ – a phenomenon he had discussed in his ‘Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality’ originally published in 1905 and re-edited by him over the course of his life.

Freud died on Sept 23, 1939, but his research and his life’s works have influenced mankind ever since.

I find that one of the more disappointing influences of modern day life is that the majority of youngsters are not that much into reading, writing and the pleasures and pastimes of browsing books at bookstores, libraries and wherever books can be found. Most appear to be more inclined to make use of their many devices of distraction from smartphones, to iPads, notebooks, PC monitors and television sets – searching on Google or YouTube and TikTok for short video clips to view or doing research on their Kindles and other similar devices. This, in turn, has led to the decline in the use of libraries and in the many closures of brick-and-mortar booksellers around the world. In its turn, online portals like Amazon, Shopee and the likes have thrived.

After being read to as a very young boy by mum, who was an English school teacher at St Thomas’ Primary, I would look forward to receiving gifts of books (comics early on and story books later), listening to stories being told on the radio (BBC used to broadcast Sherlock Holmes, among other audio books, from the mid-1950s).

I started to develop a love for writing essays from about age eight onwards. I had my first school library card at around that age, and had managed to obtain library cards at both the British Council Library and the US Consulate at probably around 11 or 12. By the time I had entered secondary school at age 13, I was well on my way to being a book addict as well as a voracious reader of anything I could find written on paper!

I would read the daily newspapers, which were subscribed to by my dad and my grandpa from about the time I could write a 350-word school homework essay. Dad had subscribed to the Sarawak Tribune; grandpa to the Straits Times and two weekend papers from Singapore (later from Kuala Lumpur) – and they all were part of my daily consumption fare, from the front page to the back pages (only skipping the classifieds and the sports columns).

Without fail on Friday nights, my entire family would troop off to visit mum’s mother, my grandma who used to stay at Tabuan Road, and my uncle the late Tan Sri Tan Chiaw Thong (who later became the state’s Attorney-General) who was a voracious reader and whose subscription of magazines from abroad were ‘handed down’ to me weekly; thereby cultivating another love – for the many varied subjects in articles written in imported British and American magazines.

My other uncle, dad’s ninth brother, Kee Pheng, was then the headmaster of St Thomas’ Primary, my alma mater; he, too, was a great reader of books – mostly fiction paperbacks and on many genres from detective to thrillers, dramas and non-fictional biographies, history and the likes. He had handed down to me when I was 11 years old the very first James Bond novel out in paperback on Pan Books in February 1960, called ‘Doctor No’. Although this became the very first Bond movie with Sean Connery and Ursula Andress, it wasn’t the first Bond book ever published: that honour had gone to ‘Casino Royale’ in 1953. It was then followed by ‘Live and Let Die’, ‘Moonraker’, ‘Diamonds Are Forever’, and ‘From Russia With Love’.

‘Doctor No’ was only the sixth in the series. Most of us are not aware that the Bond movies were not filmed in the sequence that Ian Fleming had written them.

Reading had quickly become a major hobby – together with the love for music and the movies, it would become the formative impetus for my youthful days and indeed, in the years to come in adulthood. It played a major role in my life, prompted many career moves and decisions and had greatly influenced my lifestyle as well as subconsciously formulated the way that I was to live my life well into my senior years!

I remember well that with whatever pocket money I had been given during school days and from about the time I could make my own money (I was most fortunate that at age 16, when I was in Form 4, I had started writing a regular weekly column for Desmond Leong’s English broadsheet ‘The Vanguard’ and, thus started earning my own keep), I had spent it all on my three hobbies of reading, music and movies.

For many years as well, I had caught the photography bug and had spent a small fortune in cameras, darkroom equipment and printing my own photographs. My other lifelong love for Elvis also had me spending a lot of time on propagating and promoting the Elvis Presley Fan Club of Malaysia using my own personal resources.
But all of that’s another story for another time…

Music and movies had also meant that I became a big collector of all things written about them – imported magazines like Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair from the US; NME, Melody Maker, Empire and lots more from the UK; and others from under the bookstore counters which shall remain nameless (and they all cost me a lot since they were mostly contraband!) were much valued items to be read and re-read and kept as part of a huge collection.

My regular trips to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur had meant shopping sprees to their many well-stocked bookstores then – at Kinokuniya, Borders, HMV, Times, Page One and so many more.

Beginning last month and running until May 8, 2022, this year’s edition of the ‘Second Time Around Book Fair’ is on at the Hills Shopping Mall in Kuching, situated within the Pullman Hotel block at Jalan Mathies: it is on daily from 10am to 9pm, and this year marks its 14th edition!

Larry Siah and Annie Chen, a lovely couple from Kuching and Sarikei, who had earlier on in 1992 migrated to Chilliwack, British Columbia in Canada, had started this annual book fair way back in 2008 at the Kuching Festival.

Today, it brings in container loads of thousands and thousands of pre-loved (used) books covering all subjects under the sun; from spiritual to children, from cooking to carpentry, from historical romances to biographies, from self-help to travel guides to philosophy, from artsy big table hardcover books to first editions and lots and lots of paperbacks as well – they are all lowly priced from an average of RM9.90 (90 per cent of the books) to a few around RM20 or so.

They have all been personally sorted and vetted by Larry himself which, in itself, is an amazing feat worthy of mention in the Guinness Book of Records – they have many editions of this too!

Its their first time back since Covid-19 struck in March 2020, and hopefully would be here again next year. Unfortunately this year, they won’t be able to extend beyond the May 8 deadline, due to visas’ implications for the couple. Please do pay them a visit if you’re a book lover like me – I had a couple of boxes carted away during my visit last week.

To conclude on an inspirational front, I am gratified and indeed feel blessed that my never-ending love for reading had taken me on a very personal journey in my faith: in 2019, I was approached by my mentor Reverend George Tay of Singapore (he was here on an eight-year mission from St Andrew’s Church, which ended last September) and who had preached at the Tabuan Jaya Anglican Church, to join his Discipleship Training programme, which would last a year. I had prayed over it and then bravely took up the challenge and within that course period, had managed to read The Bible from cover to cover as part of the intensive discipline.

Today, I am thankful to God for bringing me through that experience and I am most appreciative of my dear friend and mentor Revd George Tay and his wife Eunice.
Since a very young age, I have also tried my best to cultivate a love for and a culture of reading in my own three children and now, in turn they (so far I’ve been blessed with two grandsons) are continuing with this happy habit.

It is my fervent belief that all children should be taught to first listen to their parents read to them, then God-willing continue down the path by nurturing on their own, a deep yearning and a greater love for reading for the rest of their lives.

I pray to God to continue to lead us and touch us all with the blessings of reading, of the potential benefits in all the good books and the love for all of the world’s knowledge therein contained and to learn from within them.

Amen!