The Book of Life

‘Tis the window
without boundary, unrelenting, emotions so deep;
’tis the space
never-ending, overpowering, a tangled heap;
…of your soul.

’tis the art
looking to flourish, your inner self;
’tis the scroll
attained, of wonderful memories that are left;
…of your body.

open the page, you’ll see
the unending possibilities it release;
…’tis the book of life.

—————————————

I would like to wish everybody a happy World Book Day. For those that did not know, today’s date was chosen by UNESCO (The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) as it marks the anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare and Miguel Cervantes, both of whom died on 23 April 1616. It is a fitting tribute to these two figures, which without doubt are two of the world’s greatest writers ever.

I was a shy boy, when I was a kid, so I did not really have a lot of friends. As such, I spend a lot of times reading. I really love to read. Since English is not my mother tongue, I can still vividly remember the first English language book that I read. It was Biggles Goes To War by Captain W.E John. I was in standard 4 (10 years old), so naturally I became enraptured by all those grandiose adventures of Biggles and gangs. I devoured every Biggles book I could lay my hands upon. Finishing Biggles, I move on to Enid Blyton and all those classics children stories, revelling in the likes of Carroll, Kipling, Andersens et. al. (albeit in condensed and abridged form) Oh yeah, not forgetting W. Jones’s Hardy Boys series. This was the time of discovery for me, so naturally I took to these books like the proverbial fish took to water. I gradually improved my English.

I’m older now. Have a career and a family. Regretfully, now, in order to read any book at all, I had to steal time from my other commitments. At the moment, I’m reading Complicity by Ian Banks. It’s been 2 weeks since I started reading, and of today I’ve done only 2/3^rd of the novel. Well, that’s life.

So, for World Book Day today, I would like to share with you my 10 all-times favourite titles. They are:

1. The Hobbits by J.R.R. Tolkien.

2. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’s by Douglas Adams.

3. The Wasp Factory by Ian Banks.

4. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

5. Creatures of Light and Darkness by Roger Zelazny

6. His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman

7. 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke.

8. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.

9. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

10. The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling.

This entry was posted by joezul on Monday, April 23rd, 2007 at 12:22 pm and is filed under Announcement, My Fiction, My Musing, Poems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. : 140

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