i, bibliophile.

I just finished Sheldon's 400-page Are You Afraid Of The Dark? in a record-breaking six hours.

Yeah, I know that's nothing for many people. Why, back in high school, I even had a classmate who could consume similar pages of Cartland in a heart-stopping two hours! (Yup, during Chinese class).

But all the same I'm mildly congratulating myself for having achieved this small feat, which equates to having had a faster reading rate: I finished The Da Vinci Code in about ten hours, Angels and Demons in about twelve. Not to say that it was the book's innate charm that kept me glued to the pages though; hell, no. I'd even go insofar as to say that my expectations were a bit downplayed; the great Sheldon seemed to have lost some of his former touch here - failing to match the astuteness of If Tomorrow Comes and the allure of Nothing Lasts Forever. But then again, count me out to discuss these books for I'm definitely no Sheldon aficionado - I'm just up for grabs at whatever's new and hot from the latest bookstands and then I try to see for myself later.

Like most toddlers I grew up with my usual dose of once-upon-a-times and happily-ever-afters, so much that I even experimented with my own versions of beginnings and endings just to break the pattern and keep myself amused. But don't get me wrong: There was, and there still is, magic in the air. Every word and phrase continues to be wonderfully transformed into a touch of fairy dust that comes live in my head.

Later, my childhood years saw me digging up basic encyclopedias and well-loved children's classics as Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as well as the detective Hardy Boys series, and with these tomes came a strong inclination for adventure and exploration. That was when I first developed a keen interest in travel (which, incidentally, also "infected" my brother), and in time I was helplessly drawn to inflight magazines featuring exotic and faraway places. I had also begun scanning major dailies for any interesting travel articles - that's how I started my daily news habit - and further along the road, I stumbled upon National Geographic and Reader's Digest which immediately piqued my youthful curiosity.

And the rest is history.

You might suppose that with all these ramblings about my reading "love affair", I'd be quite a connoisseur by now. Unfortunately, my bustling engagements with the printed word have to be cut short by more important matters in the academe. For one, I rarely read nowadays (except when you take into account the monster textbooks that are inevitably obligatory, then this statement is readily negated.) Much of my leisure reading is deferred to "breather" times as this, and even so I can't assure myself of quality hours of peace and quiet especially with my involvement in the flurry of activity going on.

Yet I do believe keeping this healthy love for reading indeed benefited me a thing or two, aside from the fact that I simply enjoyed myself in what I am doing. I found myself a rare gem of a book in the form of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, which chronicled the account of Chinese-American families trying to survive the stumbling blocks of a dual identity. Hands down, an uncanny parallelism exists with what Chinese-Filipinos have experienced and are experiencing, and many a time I even found it slightly painful to read for I understood every inch what the characters are going through, knowing that my own heart goes out to them with the very same beat.

This Lenten season, I am having an intimate encounter with the most inspiring book of all, one that I know will nourish holistically - mind, heart and spirit. It is only fitting that this Holy Thursday, as the whole world falls on its knees to start the commemoration of one man's suffering, we try to keep in mind that amid all the books that have made us laugh and cry, one book towers above everything else, overflowing with the promise of eternal life.

If it be an eternal life of reading, let the reading go on.

(My favorite book list can be viewed in the profiles section.)