Treasures on a Desert Island

Today is one of those days when I'm not sure what to write about. But here I am at one of my favourite spots after a simple poke bowl dinner, sipping an Americano, contemplating in front of an opened laptop.

One of the simple pleasures of life is sitting at a cafe, reading a good book. My current read is a rather surprising choice: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. This adventure yarn is of course a great classic, one that is often read, willing or unwillingly, by schoolkids. I've read simplified and abridged versions of the book before but I've never read the original.

There are many of such books which are popular among schoolkids of my time but they are often available in simplified English suitable for our age. Among these are works by Dickens like A Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield and also short stories by Edgar Alan Poe. Who can forget the Telltale Heart, the Pit and the Pendulum, The Gold Bug and other immortal tales by that master of the strange and morbid.

Stories like Treasure Island thrilled me as a child. And now I'm reading the original as a sort of a light interlude in between heavier tomes of philosophy, psychology and spirituality. I try to vary my reading diet greatly. I would attempt to squeeze in some fiction every now and then. It is good to have a varied diet. I have many books that I had bought ages ago but have somehow remained unread still. They are like seeds that are awaiting their right time to germinate. Every now and then, one of these books would catch my fancy again, and it would become my main read--plucked from obscurity, like an instant celebrity.

My recent read The Nudist on the Late Shift by Po Bronson is one of such books. I bought it in 1998 at the now closed Borders, Singapore where I had spent many happy evenings after work scouring its well-stocked shelves. The book is about the unique personalities who populate Silicon Valley during the good rush days of the dotcom boom. Reading it brought back many pleasant memories of those heady times when the internet threatened to revolutionize every industry out there. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

A question often asked of celebrities is what books they would bring if they were marooned on a remote island. I like to amuse myself by thinking about this too. If I were to be allowed only 10 books to read for the rest of my life on a desert island, which ones would they be?

My selection would be very eclectic. Firstly, Merging with Siva, by Gurudeva would certainly be on my list. I would say it is one of the books that had influenced me a great deal during my years in Singapore. Every time I dip into its pages again, I unravel another layer of its wisdom. It is books like this that can nourish me for an entire lifetime.

History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell would certainly be among my selection too. Only the other day, I was fondly flipping through the yellowing pages of the paperback copy of this book that I still keep on my shelf. I still find great pleasure in Russell's very opinionated sweep of the greatest ideas from all the major philosophers of the Western tradition.

For poetry, I would certainly bring along Palgrave's Golden Treasury of English Songs and Lyrics. I've written about the significance of this book before on a previous post. Like an old friend, it has remained a faithful and indispensable companion to me through my entire teenage and adult life.

Thus far I've only named three of the ten possible books that I would bring to a desert island. I won't be able to decide on the rest of them at this point in time--there are simply too many to choose from. But those three that I've mentioned, I am certain of them because of their emotional and intellectual influence they have had and continue to have on me. And on that hypothetical desert island, if I have these books to keep me company, who needs buried treasures?