The first real book series that I genuinely loved was the Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz. Before this, all I ever read was non-fiction, and I constantly dismissed fiction as ‘not being my type’. As it turned out, the series spread like wildfire throughout my grade, and I soon found myself walking home with a copy of Stormbreaker, the first book in the series, in my hands. I will admit, it took a while to grow on me, but when it did, I was hooked. There was just something so enthralling about a 15 year old spy toppling a drug cartel in Bangkok, preventing the sabotage of the International Space Station, or infiltrating a terrorist group in Australia. I have a faint memory of viciously scouring a dusty second-hand book store to find the next book in the series, and walking out with this great feeling of reward; simply being happy that the series hadn’t ended yet. I think that’s sheer testament to how much I enjoyed the Alex Rider series.

I soon decided that I want to start reading ‘adult’ books (no, not that kind of ‘adult’), and after looking around an airport book store, I found The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. Having heard quite a bit about the book in the past, I decided to give it a shot. Yet again, like Alex Rider, it wasn’t an immediate page-turner for me and I had a fair amount stop-starts within the period of a few months. However, once I decided that I was going to sit down and actually read this book, I soon found myself unable to stop. Brown’s knack of making sure the next chapter would always be your last (unfortunately subverted by his shocking dialogue) made this book probably the most addicting read of my life. I remember sitting down to read one night, telling myself I’d stop at around midnight, but getting so carried away that I actually ended up putting the book down at 2:00 am. Brown and his fans often do get mocked, but he was the one that truly introduced me to the concept of a page-turner, and for that, cheers to you Dan Brown.

A couple of Orwells (you know which two) and a few more Langdon series books later, my dad decided that the time had come: the time to introduce me to The Catcher in the Rye. He often told me the story of how he read the entire book in one sitting back when he was in college, and once I started reading it, I began to understand why. This surprised me, because I wasn’t necessarily able to relate to most of Holden’s problems- I wasn’t being expelled from school, I wasn’t freakishly tall, I didn’t have family problems, and I didn’t feel the world was out to get me. But none of that mattered, because there was just something about the book that resonated with me and evidently, millions of other people around the world. I read this book when I was around thirteen or fourteen, and for that reason, I’d say that it’s the text that has most impacted me. At the time of first reading this book, I was rather anxious as to what my teenage years held for me- was it going to be as weird and as crazy as everyone says? Looking back, I’d say they’ve been the most eventful years of my life, and it hasn’t always been hunky dory. That’s where The Catcher in the Rye comes in- it’s comforting in its surreality. There’s no point getting bogged down over things because once the sun expands and consumes the Earth, our 15 minutes of existence on this planet would have amounted to absolutely nothing, so you might as well have a laugh every now and then. At times you may feel like everyone is a phoney and the whole world is against you, and that’s normal, as the novel’s infamous protagonist Holden Caulfield constantly reminds us. However, one day, with a song from your childhood playing, you’ll be watching your little sister frolic on the carousel just as a light drizzle starts to fall, only for your hunting cap to protect you from it, and you’ll think to yourself, “Maybe things aren’t so bad after all.” Life has no meaning, so revel in it.