In my teens and early twenties, my reading was a mixed-bag, filled with crime, thrillers, adventure, humour, westerns, biographies, etc. It was an eclectic mix, random and whatever took my fancy at the time. I was reading for pleasure, enjoying reading for the sake of reading, reading for the joy of it.
I would binge read much in the same way that we binge watching movies and TV these days. I read several of the books in The Pop Larkin Chronicles Series by H.E. Bates, The Darling Buds of May comes to mind, the novels by Eric Van Lustbader (Nicholas Linear series) with its martial arts and sensuous elements, the novels by Gerald Seymour with interesting plots, the novels by Frederick Forsyth with their political intrigue, and a couple of books by John Irving.
Over time, my reading evolved. I became less interested in crime, thrillers, adventure, and western novels to the extent that they virtually disappeared from my reading interests. I developed a stronger interest in books that dealt with societal issues or with an underlying sociological context (how do human beings fit into society). For example, in the novel Germinal by Emile Zola, poverty is depicted in raw detail.
As my political consciousness grew, my reading became more serious. The change came with the types of novels I was reading. They had strong political themes and undertones. For example, the Irish struggle for independence from the English, racial issues in the United States, the anti-colonial struggles in Africa, the state of post-colonialism in Africa, and closer to home, the political struggle in South Africa.
I read the books by African-American writers such as Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Langston Hughes. I came across the African Writers Series in the university library which introduced me to the writings of Chinua Achebe, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Bessie Head, Gabriel Okara, Wole Soyinka, and many other writers I cannot remember. In terms of the books by South African authors I read, I can remember writers such as André Brink, Peter Abrahams, Mongane Wally Serote, Ahmed Essop, Alan Paton, Richard Rive, Alex La Guma, Achmat Dangor, and Njabulo Ndebele.
The evolution in reading also shifted from fiction to non-fiction: Steve Biko’s I Write What I Like, Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, Sow the Wind: Contemporary Speeches by Neville Alexander, Decolonising the Mind by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and Frantz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression by Hussein Bulhan. Much later on, I read My Traitor’s Heart by Rian Malan and Country of My Skull by Antjie Krog.
My reading had taken a chapter change, reading had become a serious endeavour!