My 2019 Reading Journey

When transferring into a new school, creating positive, long-lasting friendships is incredibly important. Friends shape your life just as much as your family does, sharing experiences and memories that everyone treasures. However, a strong friendship is built on trust, and trust requires integrity; there’s no room for dishonesty. Over the last year, I’ve become more reserved and more cynical — the complete opposite of who I was before. Having said that, my core value of integrity has only been reinforced by the experiences I’ve been able to take a part in. Observing my personality traits in other people is always a delight. And what’s the best place to study a character?
A book.

I’ve been an avid reader ever since I was a child, throwing myself into universe after universe in an attempt to escape any form of responsibility I’m supposed to have. It allows me to not only travel between limitless dimensions, but also to study perspectives that are completely beside my own. This is what this year’s reading journey has been about.
Eragon by Christopher Paolini isn’t the first fantasy book I’ve seen, but it’s definitely the one that has had the most impact. I love the Inheritance Cycle for a multitude of reasons, especially because of the dynamic between Eragon and Saphira. Being a dragon and Rider, they share an “unbreakable bond” that enables all of the spell-casting, flying and slicing-and-dicing that makes the fantasy genre so enjoyable for me as a reader. Saphira’s development closely mirrors Eragon’s — her birth symbolizes Eragon’s transition from a farm boy to a Dragon Rider, and on his birthday, we get a vivid description of how Saphira has grown. A recurring point throughout Eragon is Saphira’s repeated attempts to breathe fire. She is unable to do so until the battle of Farthen Dûr; when Saphira breathes fire for the first time, Eragon is able to finally slay his foe, Durza the Shade. His journey requires him to mature quite quickly: after killing Durza, he reflects that he’s finally ready to assume the responsibilities of a Rider.

A common trend throughout Eragon’s adventure is that he’s never really alone. Despite growing up without his parents, our first meeting with him shows that he is quite close to his cousin, Roran; after Roran goes to the miller and Uncle Garrow dies, Eragon becomes lost. However, not long after, Brom joins him on his travels, and with him comes mentoring and friendship that Eragon had previously been deprived of. And when Brom is killed by the Ra’zac, Murtagh arrives to help him reach the Varden. If there’s one thing that I took from Eragon, it’s that you can’t achieve greatness without the help of good friends.
“If anything happens, I’m going to pin you to my back and never let you off.”
“I love you too.”
“Then I will bind you all the tighter.”
Eragon was a fantastic journey into a fantasy world, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime pulled me straight back into reality, this time looking through the eyes of fifteen-year-old Christopher Boone. He calls the story a “murder mystery” as he sets off to discover who killed his neighbour’s dog.

Similar to other protagonists of bildungsroman stories, Christopher’s main goal in the novel is to become independent. It is strongly suggested that he has a mild form of autism as he is extraordinarily gifted in math and science but has severely underdeveloped social skills. His condition results in him not being as independent as he would like. I’ve only been able to go out of the house by myself very recently, so I could strongly relate to his feeling of wanting to be able to do things himself. He shows his yearning for self-independence through his dreams about being one of few people left alive on Earth, and through disobeying his father multiple times. Christopher becomes incredibly distressed after finding out his father was the dog-killer and decides to travel by himself to London to live with his mother, gaining confidence in his abilities and becoming more self-sufficient.
The most significant part of The Curious Incident for me is the running undercurrent that most of the challenges in this story are present because of the environment that he lives in rather than his disability. It took me a long period of self-reflection to come to terms with myself, and drastically changing my school environment at the same time wasn’t the greatest of ideas (learnt it the hard way!). Much like my case, Christopher’s environment revolves around adults who don’t know how to deal with his condition — for example, only eating foods of a certain colour. The conflicts in his family stem from lack of acceptance of his differences and their frustration that follows. Christopher himself manages his disability perfectly well with rituals such as doing complex math in his head, but his family worsens his symptoms through their inability to cope.
Reading this novel helped me come to terms with the fact that I shouldn’t be worried about what others do as long as I live up to my own expectations. Christopher’s attitude towards his “special school” was quite fascinating: he refuses to be lumped into any categories because of his condition and he completely deconstructs the term ‘special needs’.
“All the other children at my school are stupid. Except I’m not meant to call them stupid, even though this is what they are. I’m meant to say that they have learning difficulties or that they have special needs. But this is stupid because everyone has learning difficulties because learning to speak French or understanding relativity is difficult and also everyone has special needs, like Father, who has to carry a little packet of artificial sweetening tablets around with him to put in his coffee to stop him from getting fat, or Mrs. Peters, who wears a beige-colored hearing aid, or Siobhan, who has glasses so thick that they give you a headache if you borrow them, and none of these people are Special Needs, even if they have special needs.”

While Eragon and The Curious Nighttime had a light tone, Lord of the Flies by William Golding was quite dark and made me become disillusioned with society. It follows a group of schoolboys as they become stranded on an island after getting shot down trying to escape a war-ridden Britain.
Throughout the novel, Golding associates the idea of civilisation with good and the instinct of savagery with evil. This conflict is the driving force of the novel as the boys quickly adapt to a barbaric life in the jungle, discarding their disciplined behaviour. The fact that the boys are so young suggests the potential for evil is dormant within all of us, even small children. The primary example of savagery and violence is Jack, who is obsessed with power — the antithesis of Ralph. The more savage Jack becomes, the easier it is for him to control the rest of the group: only Ralph, Simon, and Piggy are able to resist casting off any moral restraint and embracing the promised violence.
I couldn’t help but draw comparisons between the boys’ lack of civilisation to society today. The novel offers a view of what society would be like after a large-scale catastrophe; Ralph comes to realise that social order has little value in a world where survival is a struggle, such as after a devastating war. Even after the young boys are separated from civilisation, they end up mirroring the world around them in their descent to torture and murder. In fact, without an authoritarian figure, nearly every child will change behaviours, just like how kids in a class will become rowdy if their teacher leaves the room. Jack learns to use the fear of the Beast to control their behaviour, much like how religion is manipulated today as an instrument of power. There’s a reason memes exist, even those about priests and altar boys.
The journey I went through on each book was quite different, but each one served its purpose: entertainment, and a small lesson. Eragon showed me what a truly inseparable bond looked like, and the Inheritance Cycle taught me what it meant to live up to the expectations that come with a change in identity. The Curious Nighttime showed me how it felt to push your limits and do something completely foreign to you, and reminded me that dishonesty is a terrible trait. And Golding told me that people can be willing to throw away ethics and morality in a heartbeat. These books have completely changed my course in life, from my interpretation of my identity to my understanding of society, and what I plan to do in the future.
