When Do You Read?

Love to get up very early and read in my favourite chair on the verandah while the sun comes up - drink copious amounts of tea and eat breakfast slowly page by page with smudges of yoghurt or jam between the lines.

Promiscuous reader. Love to read in cafes ... especially after the gym when I feel I've deserved it.

Favourite reading spots - Elly's Table at Centerpoint (excellent coffee); Coffee Bean at BSC (though I hate drinking from those silly glasses); Starbucks at Bangsar Village; Chinos on the Park; Delicious (most comfortable with all those lovely cushions!) and Basque Lane in 1 Utama. Need sunlight and the open air, good coffee, decent food.

All of these are also favourite writing haunts too - depends on how the mood takes me. I seem to read a lot when i'm not writing and write a lot when I'm not reading. I'm fickle. Go through phases.

Always read when I eat. (As a forensic examination of any of my books would show.)

Always read in the loo. Usually magazines or poetry or books with very short chapters. Need to fix up library shelves in there.

Have given up reading in the bath. (It is possible to get special bathbooks with waterproof pages though ...)

Have books in different rooms of the house and can't seem to pass them by without at least a little read. Coffee table books usually on some local theme in the lounge. Cookbooks in the kitchen. Inspirational stuff about self-actualisation, poetry, psychology by my bed. Naughty books stuffed into the back of a cupboard where the in-laws won't find them and get shocked that I have such an X-rated imagination. Writing books in my office (the back bedroom) dipped into as I prepare course materials. Books floor to ceiling in the room where we watch TV.

And always a book in my bag. Handbags chosen for bookholding capacity.

Read at odd moments. Check-out queues. On public transport. At immigration.

Can't understand how most people can tolerate the boredom of life without a dialogue with a book! Compare the voracious readers on the London Tube with the staring-into-spacers of the LRT, for example.

Don't read at night. Can't. Fastest acting soporific drug.