Failing Fiction

It was a relatively quiet Saturday afternoon. I was in Raffles Place then popped by City Hall for a short while before making my way back to my parents’ home. Parents’ home. It used to be just home. Now there is a need to distinguish between that and my matrimonial home.

Perhaps I have been living in the Northwest for too long. I find it comforting and familiar. Not to mention a more convenient place to live in. Location wise, it pales in comparison to my matrimonial home, which is so much closer to central Singapore. However, this neighbourhood has everything. A suburban mall, an impressive Sports Complex complete with a ‘wave pool’ and eating places right across the street where we reside.

The aforementioned suburban mall has everything. And ‘everything’ by my terms, has to include a community library. So before I headed back, I stopped by the community library. On a whim, I decided to pick out a fiction book. Something light and fluffy to read for a change. But when I was conducting the catalogue search, I was stumped. Which fictional work should I borrow?

“Eat Pray Love” …was the first search. As the movie is currently screened in theatres, all the books were checked out. Hot item I guess. Wait a minute. That’s not really fiction, is it?

I thought really hard and finally typed in “The Last Lecture”. I knew there and then that I had failed miserably in my attempt to read stories. It’s been eons since I read something that had been made up. Was that in secondary school? Fiction no longer appealed to me past a certain age. Has realism set in since my adolescent years? I missed a good read…a real fake story. And I have officially lost the desire to immerse myself in a world of make believe. Escapism is not an option? Sad case I am.

So I walked out of the library with 2 books. Both non-fiction. The second book was a random find lying on a table near the checkout queue. I liked Robin Sharma's first book, so I decided to give this a go too.