Just surfed through mBak Eka's page and started thinking about books too. Not that I rarely thought of them. I think it's safe to say that I thought about books as often as men thought about sex.
I started reading books when I was born. Hahaha. It's been so long, it feels that way to me.
The first storyteller who really got to me was of course, Enid Blyton. Back when I was a kid, Gramedia was still selling Ms Blyton's books like hot cakes. Nowadays I have to dig up Tante's collection to put a hand on one.
The first ones I read were the Famous Five series. I used to parallel myself to George (God knows why).
Then I got into the boarding school series, St Clare and Malory Towers. Those were the days.
Next, came Alfred Hitchcock with his Detectives Trio. I remember my favourite was The Shrinking House. That was the first time I recognized the power of deduction.
I started reading Agatha Christie at a very early age. But then of course, I barely understand what those people in the detective novels were talking about.
I think I only began to enjoy her books when I started Jr Hi. It took me half a book to get hooked. Up until now, one of my three-wishes-to-Genie is to have Ms Christie alive just once again to write yet another book.
People say her best book is Curtain, the one that was supposed to be her last one where her much celebrated detective, Poirot, died. It's a unique work but to me personally, it's got to be And Then There Were None. It was a brilliant work, hands down.
Ms Christie herself said that she was much challenged about writing it because it seemed almost impossible to do.
The other work of her that I like very much is the Harlequin series. I think the strength in her works lies on the fact that she could point the parallelism in just about anything to classics - and she did it dead on yet artistically.
Afterward, I remembered being very much taken by Sidney Sheldon. The first of his books I read was The Windmills of God. I've got lots of favourite among his earlier works like The Sands of Time, If Tomorrow Comes but the best one has got to be A Face In The Mirror. God, the impact of that story is still as clear as the day I finished the story.
Speaking of impact, the most powerful book I've ever read was Gone With The Wind. Jeez, talking about impression... that wasn't a mere storm, it had been a tsunami. A very true classic yet brilliantly written that it stirs up your soul and turns it over.
It was said that writing the book had been so draining to the writer, Margaret Mitchell, that after she'd finished the book she was never able to write anything else until the day she died.
Imagine that.
Let's fast forward to my latest book, which was The Dog Who Spoke with Gods. Love it. It has all the making of intriguing popular novel.
We'll save the rest, most-hated novels and the ones I regretted buying for the "next edition." Teehee. Hasta la vista, amigos.