A Secret Side

I am an immature reader.

I guess that is one confession I am a bit embarrassed to admit since I am a literature student and my college professors used to frown about the kind of pulp fiction I am addicted to.

For the literary purist, I am the stereotype of one who preferred lower class reading materials over the realities of life.

I guess pain and reality and unhappy endings sell well to lit critics but I have never really fancied littering my reading relaxation with such pieces although I do study them for analytical purposes. I just can’t bear drowning in on them when I am supposed to have some bit of R&R.

Well let me share my reading list with you,

My Elementary days used to find me reading Sidney Sheldon stuff back to back. I started out with If Tomorrow Never Comes then I went off to Bloodlines and something about diamonds and mines that I cannot remember anymore. There was the Sands of Time and something about mirrors. It is no longer as clear and I no longer enjoy Sheldon as much as I did in the past. Sheldon books remind me strongly of old closets and antiquities, I just don’t know why.
Then, I turned to Tagalog pocketbooks, the really highly inexpensive ones. They were not as sophisticated as the ones we have now where you get to pick a series which suits your tastes. There was Helen Meriz, Maia Jose and several other Cinderella stories where the rich guy marries the poor girl and they lived happily ever after.
When I was in first year highschool, I went nonfic reading biographies and autobios of people. There was a Marie Antoinette book, a George VI one, A Catherine of Aragon story and the one about Princess Diana written by Andrew Morton. That was the reason why I got such low grades when I was in the first year. The tagalog romance novels I have been reading also ate most of my rest time as well and I barely have time to do anything else.
Then, when I was in second year, I gave up reading pocketbooks for a while and focused on my studies to catch up with what highschool students of my age are supposed to learn. I read the textbooks cover to cover and I did all my notes and studied my lessons. Emerging as top of the class by the end of the school year could not compensate with the boredom, damn it. I missed my books.
By the third year, a rent-a- bookstore has opened up in our small sleepy town where no one has thought of ever selling books because they do not sell well. I was so grateful to see a lot English pocketbooks for rent at 8 to 15 pesos for two days. I went book-berserk and found out that I actually loved reading medieval romances and historical lovestories (the pulp types, not the classics). I was into harlequin, zebra and mills and boon. I would miss recess for days and I would walk to from school to home just so I could rent my books. Since my mother disapproved of my habits, I often sit in front of a brook on the way home for hours on end and would go home when it was already inexcusable for me to stay on.
In college, I was into a lot of textbooks and treatises and serious literary works but I never gave up my passion for pulp romance. I could not. It has seeped into my blood. Along with Macbeth, I read Jayne Ann Krentz and Julie Garwood and a lot of other nonsense. Along with the poetry of the great, I read Anne Rice, tried Stephen King (and hated him) and went off with J.K. Rolling and Tolkien and Vanessa and Rose Tan and Arielle and Sofia, and Edith Montelibano (shocking Edith)….

I was a mad, indiscriminate reader. I read Coelho (introduced by Mae Sheilou and Adel), Dan Brown (courtesy of Adel), Bob Ong (what madness Adel), and a whole lot of crap I had not fully digested. I was also into Michael Chrichton, John Grisham, Jeffrey Archer etc.

But, I have always detested horror stories and ghost stories. I abhorred them which to most of my friends were quite abnormal of me. I also did not went through the whole Nancy Drew and Hardy Boy’s series phase.

And, I had not thought I was into intrigues, conspiracies and detective type of novels until I come across a romance line in one major publisher.

But this summer, I am so into it now. I absolutely loved detectives and agents and CIA’s and psychic heroines and odd out of this day sensation plus terrorist battles and the like. Coupled with romance, they just seem so palatable.