The Beginnings

I began reading when I was a child, yet the concept seemed so useless. I’d sit there, look at some ink, and maybe get something out of the whole ordeal. Either some story or a weird fact I could talk about in class. 

I was not interested in reading, especially since I had a device that could show me anything in the world with only a few touches of the glass squashed between my finger and a luminous piece of plastic. This device was called an iPad, notorious for its addictive effects on kids. (Me included). It got to a point where I rarely picked up a book, so much so that my mother and grandparents were willing to pay me to read. I managed to reach a wage of a whopping 4 cents per page, along with a generous tip; consistent jokes central to the idea of robbing banks to keep up. 

That’s right, I read.

I ploughed through page after page, hunting for knowledge and hungering for money. But realistically, I was a child, and if reading became my full-time job, an average of $12 per book was not going to cut it in the adult world of unfathomably large bills.

So I slowed my pace. I’m not entirely sure when my lavish wage was pulled, however, it didn’t really matter. There was no way to pay off a monthly $100 water bill. Back to the iPad I went. From a distance, you wouldn’t have been able to tell if I was reading the third Percy Jackson novel or watching something about Minecraft. I was effectively doing the exact same thing, sitting and looking at a brick of information.

I didn’t stop reading altogether, though. As mentioned, I did read the third Percy Jackson novel. I enjoyed it so much that I read all five, and continued on to read the complete series of the Heroes of Olympus novels as well, both series written by Rick Riordan. That was the first time I remember genuinely enjoying a book, let alone a series. I actually wanted to read it, instead of performing the monotonous act for a monotonous salary. From memory, this was in 2019, the Christmas of which I got my first phone. And so reading became a coursework task as I entered high school.

I do not remember many books I read as a child. I remember the Percy Jackson series for how exciting it was, however I never really had anything clasp me in its grip just as tight. I do remember vaguely a series called The Prince Warriors (author Priscilla Shirer), the first book of which I was given by someone from my church at the time. It was somehow symbolic of The Bible and how you should follow the word of God, but again, I was a child and only thought the cover art was cool. 

During high school, I only ever read for a school assignment or to get a passing grade. The thrill of reading was long-lost to the winds of time, except for one book that I read in 2021. When It Drops by Alex Dyson. I intend to re-read this book and write a separate post with more details and thoughts about it, however, there was one scene that made me sweat. (I will not elaborate further, as I would like to have at least one thing to expound upon in the future post.)

I began reading again in the July of 2024: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Like the books between then and 2020, this one was for an English class, however it rekindled the spark of my imagination from reading. As depressing a story it was, for the first time in a long while I could imagine a scene happening. 

Exuberant, I got to thinking about what I should read next. After some deliberation, I came to the decision to read George Orwell’s 1984, so I grabbed a copy and dived head first into my second dystopian novel of the year. An absolute masterpiece, this book had the same effect on me as the film, The Truman Show, did. Weeks after reading it, I was making connections between this “fictional” story and reality. And thanks to this book, I started taking to current world events and politics. (I will also write a separate post about this book in the near future).

During the time of me reading this novel, I discovered an online platform called Goodreads. On this website, I could create a list of books that I wanted to read and rate ones that I have read out of five stars. 

Luckily, one of my mates already had an account on this platform and was secretly a bookworm, at least it seemed it was a secret. He was rarely without a book, yet the frequency of our conversations regarding music and video games far outweighed any we had regarding the concept of books. This is the same friend that introduced me to my first Haruki Murakami book, Norwegian Wood. 

Except for one chapter, I fully consider it to have an incredible story. However, it wasn’t the story that caught me off guard, it was the microscopic attention to detail. Even if it wasn’t necessary to the movement of the plot, Murakami would detail the way a character would make dinner, for example. The ingredients used, the temperature of the oven, the timing of the water boiling. If there was something to explain, it would be explained. This may seem tedious to some, however it managed to completely immerse me into the set of the novel, and has inspired me to try cooking some unique dinners.

Between the August I read Norwegian Wood and the December of the same year, I had the urge to read another Murakami book lingering in the back of my mind. I still read in between, however I still craved the detail in his books. Some members of my family that had read some Murakami recommended that I read his 1Q84 volumes, and suggested that it would be in my grandparent's book collection. So I began the near 1000-page traversal, and my addiction to Murakami stories grew.

Thankfully, my mother and grandparents have an extensive collection of books that I can draw upon. I guess my 4 cents salary disappeared from me in order to fund this sizeable library. So far I have been able to borrow many books from this archive, including Catch-22, The Book Thief, and the first Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy book, as well as 1Q84. If a book I would like to read isn’t in this exhibit, and my Goodreads mate doesn’t own it, I’ll purchase it from Amazon or the local Dymocks. Most likely, I will finish it in the span of roughly two weeks.

An example of this is my third Murakami book, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I bought my copy on a Friday afternoon, and exactly two weeks later, on the Friday afternoon, my eyes laid rest upon the last page of the novel. The edition I purchased is a 600-page book with rather fine print, so I am surprised with how quickly I managed to complete it.

Unfortunately, this rush of reading had drastically reduced my quantity of musical composition prior to The Handmaids Tale, to the point where I wouldn’t touch an instrument or my DAW for weeks. However, after some time, I had managed to find a worthwhile balance with my ratio of reading to composing.

At the time of writing this, I am currently reading my sixth Murakami book, with my seventh lined up. 

And, at the time of writing this, both 1984 and Norwegian Wood are the only two books in my favourites list on Goodreads.