My bookish journey

Ahh! The Magic Tree House - The Knight in the Dawn! Yes, finally, you’ve been waiting a whole day for Mary to finish it. You grasp it in your hands, beady little eyes already skimming the cover, impatient to start reading it. You are in Grade 3, having just transferred to a new elementary school, your only place of solace is in the vast library that is open all day; much to your delight! Oh, that’s the teacher calling, better run!

So when did you start reading? Well, the earliest case that you remember encountering words is in daycare. Your parents had a busy work schedule and dropped you off at a daycare program afterschool each day. Not knowing a single word of English (you had just come back from China), you waddled behind the teacher as she jabbered away to the other children in rapid lingo. You don’t want to brag about being smart, but you did pick up the language fairly quickly and easily. Soon, you were speaking English so fluently that you were admitted straight to Grade 1 without taking the ESL test. This opened a door into a world that you previously could never have imagined. Letters formed words, which formed sentences which formed stories which are written in books. Books! Books!

In Grade 4 you discovered Harry Potter. Well, actually, back when you were in China, your aunt used to read Harry Potter to you in Chinese (If you recall!) It was like discovering your name for the first time. My name…is Harry! (just kidding) Now, H.P. was not an easy book to read, your brother struggled with it until… actually, you don’t think he’s ever picked it up, yikes. However, you found it to be perfectly to your taste. You treasure these books more than your phone (now that’s saying something). You were quick to throw aside Geronimo Stilton (mind you, they were colourful and funny, but a bit too simple of a read for a grade 4 don’t you think?) in favour of The Thief Lord, the Inkheart Trilogy, Charlotte’s Web and The Tale of Despereaux to name a few.

In grade 5 your teacher, bless her, encouraged reading by rewarding it with ice cream! All you had to do was read a book, fill in two pages of activities/questions about your book and for every 15 books you read, you got to make your own ice cream sundae and eat it while the class does work. You also got stickers to stick by your name on a chart. I must have logged over a hundred books by the end of the year. The 3 students with the most books by the end of the school year could choose a book from a pile of books the library doesn’t want anymore. Score!

You cried and laughed your way into grade 8, growing taller and happier. Your head is now full of books like The Hunger Games and The Divergent Series. As the year go by you dig deeper and deeper into YA and by the end of grade 9, you’ve dug yourself a decent, comfortable home to burrow in for the winter. Sure, there were other genres you have yet to discover, like the dreaded classics (ugh) and non-fiction (nope). And so you stick to your unwavering love for young adult fiction until one day in class your teacher announces that you will be reading Pride and Prejudice as the year’s novel. You go into the unit with wariness, trying not to fall in love with Elizabeth’s wit or cringe at Lydia’s unfortunate activities, and trying not to laugh at Mrs. Bennet’s passive aggressive remarks and sidestepping Darcy’s amazing level of haughtiness. But you are ultimately trapped, as you write with feverish delight about Elizabeth’s idea of love and marriage on the final paper, you know then that you’ve missed out. Big time.

Flash forward to today. On my to be read shelf you would see Orwell (Down and out in Paris and London), Dickens (Great Expectations), and Tolstoy (War and Peace), but also V.E. Schwab (Vicious), Sarah J Maas (Queen of Shadows), and Jandy Nelson (I’ll give you the Sun). I have since widened my reading horizons and liked almost everything and anything. But being a reader is not easy. First there’s the bookworm thing, isn’t that an insult? Why am I being compared to a worm that chews up books? I’d say that there is quite a distinguishable line between swallowing a book in a figurative sense and literally chewing up a book. Then there is the issue of having people who don’t read sneer at you for having a book (or books) in your hands. I guess it’s similar to video games. But the main problem of being a reader is the fact that you can’t say “I read for a living” unless you are a professional critic. Society (namely my family) wants me to have a job that would benefit the community in any way and me reading books isn’t going to cut it. So with the pursue of other more “useful” activities (piano, math, non-profits) my time for reading has dramatically decreased. So much so that I have resorted to reading at the weirdest nooks and crannies of time during the day. My wish is to read every book in the world. Sounds childish doesn’t it? But I really hope that it’ll come true.

Thanks for reading!

Letter to the past me

Crop top. Short Skirt. Look how the other girls flirt. Sneaker. Hand me down. But I never see you frown.

Hurry, go catch that bus. Hurry and you’ll miss it. Hurry before everyone else leaves.

September 15^th 2015

Dear stargirl,

I tell you I am proud of you. You tell me you are sick of me. It’s okay if you don’t listen to me now, but you will someday. Maybe you will in 5 years time.

Although your future doesn’t look too bleak, there are some things that you should know about, both about yourself and about the world, just to make your path a little clearer, a bit less bumpy on the go. Firstly, it’s okay to not fit in. There is no need to compare yourself to the other girls. Don’t be jealous of their longer legs or their curvy waist or there expensive clothes because every girl you’ve met has compared themselves to you. Love the bits that are you such as your big eyes, your tall physique and your unwavering love for books instead of clothes. Secondly, take your time with everything. You love to act without thinking and talk without processing and it’s cute for a while but makes you seem a bit hotheaded in the long run. Thirdly, a life without purpose and structure is as good as none. You will find yourself lost at times wondering why you are even bothering with a high school education (a notion you will find absolutely absurd later on) and how to not be a passenger in life. The latter stems a bunch of other questions that are too profound to answer at the moment. I doubt you will ever be able to conclude on anything solid but you’ll get close.
 

A few years later you’ll be making a move and it will be quite an important journey in your teenage life. The first week of class at your new school will be pretty bad. You (almost) lose your bus fare, get lost in the huge school (or what it seemed so then) and miss your friends terribly. Your first bus ride to UBC will seem like such a big achievement at the time, but soon you will wish to be back home where school is just a mere 15 minutes away instead of a whole hour. But you are not so young anymore, as much as you try to hide it.

The long commute hours will be exhausting I’m sure. But learning tiredness is good for you. You haven’t tasted true fatigue yet. And you will learn about loneliness and the feeling of unfamiliarity and uncertainty in those long hours on the bus in the winter and so when your friends complain to you about being lonely because they have no one to hang out with over the weekend you will know that it runs deeper than that. 

You know what though? Even if it never rains but it pours, there are plenty of pockets of sunshine in between and the more of those you collect, the less dreary those wet days will seem. You will make friends, fall in love, and do well in classes (and do not so well in other classes). You will join the badminton team, Student Council and Debate. But remember this, you can’t do everything. As unsatisfying as it is to not be able to fit all the classes you want on your schedule or having to sacrifice video games for extracurricular activities, you simply don’t have the energy (physically and mentally) to shoulder everything at the same time.

Always so self-conscious and camera shy eh? You should learn to be on the other side of the lens. It’s important not to be anonymous in this world. Also, learn to speak up, if not physically then through your writing. Do you not love to write? Did you not want to become an author? When you harbour your dreams long enough, they stay dreams. Set the sails, quickly, before the wind dies.
                                                        

You will read a lot of books, watch a lot of movies and videos, listen to a lot of songs and try a lot of new things that will inspire you. You love to quote from books, movies and songs alike and sometimes you get overwhelmed. What you will learn over the years is that it’s okay to let go. Put that book down if you’re not enjoying it (you really are not obligated to finish every book you pick up, really, it’s ok to not finish a book) and quit the job or position if you don’t feel passionate about what you are doing because although the universe might not revolve around you, you, do. And that’s all that matters. 

Laugh a lot, cry a little, growing up is risky, sometimes an uphill battle. Slow down and catch your breath. Slow down you will make it there. Slow down, your life doesn’t end here.