alfia s.

it was a couple years later, in 7th grade, that i strolled into another airport’s bookstore yet again on a journey home and bought my first classic, the secret garden, and fell in love with mary lennox’s story and the writing (it remains to this day a story that i hold very near and dear to my heart). motivated by a positive experience of reading a classic, the next thing i’d done was acquire a copy of jane austen’s sense and sensibility, fascinated by the idea of reading it after finding out that a soap opera my mother watched on tv was loosely inspired by it.

that’s where i hit a roadblock, because my vocabulary wasn’t advanced enough to understand a lot of the words utilised in the book without turning again and again to a google search bar, and that’s when i remember thinking “i don’t have enough reading comprehension to understand this book right now.” i shelved it after two chapters. i’d felt inadequate.

it was an year later that i came upon the world of YA books, a world that i had not been privy to, and quickly, gladly, fell down its rabbit hole. i only started having a vested interest in literature then, when my understanding of the novel did not feel anachronistic from the world i was living in. but i’d also become intimidated by classics, when picking one up felt like a daunting task instead of a good challenge, because i always felt like i wasn’t smart enough, or well-read enough for it. but now that i’m older, i’ve become more accustomed to the idea of taking up that challenge. i’m not a teenager in middle school who had just started actually trying to read anymore, the one who’d become insecure and backed off because i felt like the book i picked up wasn’t in my ballpark. i’ve read close to a hundred books now, not much in the grand scheme of things and the time that has passed since then, but i’ve learned to read critically, have considerably expanded my vocabulary, and am more amenable to seeing what the fuss is about with these novels that have stood the test of time and carved a space for themselves in the literary canon.