FMC new reading list.

Mon 10 Sep 2018.

I consider myself an avid reader from young. My mom used to "scold" me and said why I don't go out and play with the other boys. I remember being engrossed in the "Hikayat Siti Zubaidah" in "sya'ir" form in Jawi my father had bought. I couldn't put it down. In the school extension block that was our Std. 6 classes, the entire library was one solitary cupboard of story books, with titles like "Biggles" and "William, the Conqueror" ( a small boy hero - not the English king) and other titles that escaped me now, 6 decades later. I read through the entire "library" within the year, and in one class composition inserted words like "nevertheless" and "none the less" and Miss Ponniah, our English teacher, was impressed and called me out in class in front of the others. None the less, the class couldn't be less bothered, though I was proud as a peacock!

In PD, the personal library of the "budak boys" was more inclusive. At 16 (not that young, but a small boy still), I was introduced to my first "hot" book. It was D.H.Lawrence's "Lady Chaterley's Lover". This book went around "B" coy and changed hands quickly. I can't remember whose it was. What I remember was the first printed 4-letter word and the new word "coition". Of course, like "Hikayat Siti Zubaidah", this I couldn't put down, too. Looking back, this was the start of my adult list that went on for a short while until I lost interest because they weren't Lawrence, whom we know was a great literary figure.

Right from PD days I had learned that sports was held holy in college, and my non-sporting inclination had to make some way for enforced labour. Unsurprisingly, I didn't do well in sport, even though I played hockey, boxed and ran cross country. But the reading habits of these excellent students rubbed on me, not that I was not already  keen.  Later in life, at work and at golf, the one sport that I consider to have love for, my reading helped me. In golf, I consider myself self-taught, and my collection of more than 100 golf books attest to it.

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