Lautsprecher: Bookworms Uncool? Think again.

Growing up, I’ve never thought of myself as someone who loved to read. I enjoyed listening to a story or two, but I never really read very widely. I even recall an incident when I betrayed my ignorance by telling a friend that Nancy Drew was an author!

It was only in the later part of my primary school life that I found myself going to the library more often. In fact, in a good month, I would be able to finish reading a total of 27 books. Admittedly, most of those books were taken from the Berenstain Bear series but in my defence, I must confess that I did read the works of Judy Blume, Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton (These were the Stephenie Meyers for eleven-year olds).

In secondary school, I found myself hooked on Mitch Albom’s and James Patterson’s books. On days when I had to travel home by myself, I would be hunched over a novel and would never alight without the same book in my hands. On the bus, I was always oblivious to my surroundings. While other students nodded off to sleep, reading always sustained me and I almost never succumbed to the attack by the ZZzzz … monster.

Since the start of my junior college life, I have picked up many books from the library but never got to read any of them as a result of the distraction from piles of undone tutorials. However, when my tutor assigned the class to read ‘The Kite Runner’, I found myself rolling back the years to my secondary school days again.

The question I find myself grappling with these days is: what is it that makes this generation of youths believe that reading meant you were a geek? … Well, I for one, believe that it is cool to read. The act of reading a newspaper was something unfathomable in the past but these days, I would find myself discussing world issues with my friends and family. It has gone a long way to help me in my studies and is a boon to my social life. I am still as chatty as before but these days, engaging in intellectual discourse has become second nature to me.

An adult once told me that youths today dislike reading. I agreed, but wished I didn’t have to. Books made me come alive with the author’s vivid description and clever use of pun. I guess I don’t mind reading them but just don’t make me memorise the contents of any book. While they may be useful sources of knowledge, books also feed the soul as they do the mind.