One of my readers wrote to me and asked me to share about the books that have shaped my view of life. I scanned my shelf and plucked out certain books. I also searched through my memory for books long gone and half-forgotten.
I began to list them down, but while I was halfway through, I realized that merely presenting a list wouldn’t be half as interesting as telling the story of why they made it to the list. So I decided to present them in a chronological fashion as to when they made an impact on me.
So the first, I’ll talk about books that shaped my early years up to around my twenties:
- The Bible – The Bible was a huge part of my young life. I was raised to believe in it as the inerrant and inspired word of God. My dad would wake the whole family up every day at around 6 in the morning to do a bible-reading session where we would each take turns reading a verse from the selected passage. I would later on spend much time reading it on my own and even cover to cover a few times.
Favorite Passage: The truth shall set you free.
- Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen and The Brothers Grimm – My dad and I slept next to each other. Our bedroom was adjacent to what we called the “study room” and it was only divided from that room by a screen mesh. Dad would wake up as early as 2 or 3 in the morning and begin poring over invoices and other business papers and the light from the study room would sometimes wake me up. If I couldn’t sleep again, I would go there and sit on his rocking chair with a thick book of fairy tales in my hand. This began my love affair with stories of knights and kings, and dragons, magic and sorcery.
Favorite Passage: And they lived happily ever after.
- Children’s Digest – Perhaps the greatest impact to my being such an avid reader is this set of booklets a la Reader’s Digest. (To the kids who have no idea what Reader’s Digest is, please just look it up on the net). There was a comic there about Twinkle the Star who had a star-shaped head and a human body and I remember being fascinated with it so much that I asked my sisters to read his story over and over again, until they got tired of it and I eventually learned to read it on my own, as well as many other great stories in that collection. I don’t know why but we had lots and lots of Children’s Digest around the house, but I have those to thank for developing my love of reading and stories.
Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.