I am a newspaper reader until now, although my family don't buy physical newspaper anymore, I still subscribed (paid) to a Malaysian newspaper online. However, I only read during weekend or holidays nowadays, age caught up with me already, in my 20s to 30s, I could still read before I sleep during workdays. Now, I could even fall asleep while watching youtube on workday night.
When I was small, I stayed in a small town and the local book stores only had school related books, revision books, dictionaries and somehow cookbooks. My primary to secondary school leisure books were mostly from the book rental stores, I read mainly Taiwanese / Hong Kong romance, wuxia (武侠) and science fiction. You have to become a member of the book rental store, then for every book you rent, you have to pay an amount from 50 cents to RM2.
Of course, there's the school library, but we were only allowed to borrow one book per week, I was a librarian during primary school, so I could borrow three books per week. Most of the books were educational one, the more "interesting" one was not there in school. Anyway, I read a lot of books from the library too, in school, the teacher would dictate what books to read that particular week, normally it would be a rotation, one week Chinese book, the second week Malay book, third week English book and returned to Chinese book on fourth week.
Normally, the book rental store had racks of books, mostly in Chinese for the novels, some even had manga in Malay. Those that charged 50 cents are mainly older titles and very tattered. I even bought some for less than RM1 when the book stores are clearing out some torn old books.
I spent a major chunk of my pocket money on the books. I started to read romance when I was in standard five or six, starting with 瓊瑤, that time, TV station started to broadcast Taiwanese dramas from the novelist 瓊瑤. And me and my neighbour found out that the books were available in rental book store, we pooled money and get a membership in a rental book store. And started to read novels. It opened my eyes to not just romance, I was even exposed to wuxia and science fiction. I read a lot of novels from Taiwanese writers, I think I even finished reading all novels written by 瓊瑤. Others are 张小娴, 席绢, 于晴, 楼雨晴, 古灵, 典心, 寄秋, 凌淑芬 and etc. I particularly like 席绢, I think her novel is the first that talk about going back to the past, I really admired her imagination.
Other romance novelists that I read were from Hong Kong, 亦舒, 梁凤仪 and 岑凯伦. 岑凯伦 is a really productive writer, his/her novels could fill a huge book rack. I read in a forum somewhere that mentioned 岑凯伦 is a collective of novelists because the style was a bit inconsistent. I am not really a fan of 亦舒, 梁凤仪 though.
I feel that I am a very rational person from young. I know that I am not the heroine type in life, I am more like the sidekick. And I couldn't understand the way the second lead behaved in the novel. As I grew older, I found 瓊瑤 earlier novels to be very irrational and unethical too. Now many people quote from 瓊瑤's novel as a form of sarcasm. Like 'you only lost your legs, but she lost the love of her life!', people defended the third party, so horrible!
From the rental book store, I able to explore the wuxia genre too. 金庸, 古龙, 梁羽生 and 温瑞安 were the big four in wuxia genre. I read more on 金庸 and 古龙. For 金庸, I like "鹿鼎记" the most. Other than that, I also got hooked on science fiction series 卫斯理 from 倪匡. My imagination about aliens and galaxy came from 卫斯理. Most of the books from this series showed that it's well read (very tattered). One book around 50 cents to RM1 and I could finished in half day. I really spent a lot on rental books. For context, my monthly allowance during secondary school was RM50. I didn't go to canteen during recess. My school session was half day though. Just eating lunch at home.
I don't really rent manga though. That's the job of my younger brother. He used his allowances to rent manga and I read the shonen manga that he rent. My favourite is "Hikaru no go ヒカルの碁". However, I also pooled money with my friends to rent shojo manga "Oke no Monsho 王家の紋章", I learnt a lot of Egypt history from this manga, LOL! This manga was very popular among us girls. I once came upon a whole series of "Hikaru no go" in a book store and it's around few hundred Ringgit. I was still studying that time and on a tight budget, so I didn't buy it, still sad thinking about it nowadays.
I only started to seriously read English books around Form 3 in secondary school. I got the English books from the school or state library, but the books were mostly old titles, like Enid Blyton, considered quite tame compared to the Chinese books I read. I also read serious titles in Malay in secondary school, I read "tulang-tulang berserakan" by Usman Awang in Form 2 I think, it made me very upset. Maybe I was still too young then.
I stopped going to Rental book store since university days. In university, there're so many libraries. I was in University of Malaysia. I normally frequented my own faculty's library only. However, only engineering related titles were available there, other genres not much. If I wanted to read novels, I would go to the main library. There're also Chinese novels in some other faculty's library, but I never ventured there. One of my university mates told me she found the libraries were the most important asset in the university, she was amazing! She studied economy and took ACCA part time, she got all the references and books for ACCA from the library and studied by her own. By the time she graduated in economy, she also got the certification for ACCA. I admired her so much for this, such determination.
Back to the topic, nowadays for novels, mainly I read the China web novel series. There are so many genres there. I only read paper based books on non-fiction. I heard the book rental shop I frequented in my younger days was closed. It couldn't survive, one could find novels, manga online for "free" now. It's kind of sad. I once dreamed of opening of a cafe cum book rental shop after I retire. Well life goes on, happy reading everyone!
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