my ancient passion

When I was a teenager, my favorite author was Denise Robins. She wrote romance novel. None of her books had ever disappointed me. I remember always ‘burning the midnight candle’ just to finish up her books( which I seldom did for my school textbooks). Once I got hold of Denise Robins books, that was it. I would not feel easy spending time with friends until I had finished reading up the book. I studied at a boarding school in Kuantan, I remember always took her books to my night self- revision class, and covered it with the school text underneath to avoid the inspecting warden from taking it away. I also had my meals with the book next to my plate. That was how fascinated I was with Denise Robins. I did read ‘Mills and Boons’ series too but not all authors really pleased me.

I loved her books so much because the flow of her story was so exciting. It was a sort of book where one would curiously look forward to what’s going to happen next. Most of her stories were about ancient time, stories which most of them taken place in England (some Australia & also USA – for intercultural and intercontinental sake) The protagonists were usually the aristocrats (the ‘lord’, The duke, the duchess etc) . Apart from being rich, they were also depicted as ‘tall, dark and handsome’ and the heroines were beautiful, kind,(but sometimes not so fortunate). I guess I liked her books so much because it managed to bring tears to her eyes. So many sad things happened to the young lovers. Most of her books ended with happy ending (which brought happiness and satisfied me a lot!). There were few books, however, ended with the death of the protagonist which eventually brought prolonged tears and dissatisfaction to me. (come to think of it, I wonder if I still like to read this type of ancient setting love stories – I don’t think so! )

After finished reading her book, I would start to look for another. That was how strong Denise Robins books to me. I collected quite a member of her books but unfortunately some of them were destroyed - eaten by termite at my mother’s wooden house. I used to lock myself in my room reading the books, even refused to help my mother cooking in the kitchen because I was so hooked on the books! My parents (whom I always thought then as being ‘old-fashioned’ thinkers!) did not like us (my sisters and I) to read love stories. They, of course preferred us to read our schools textbooks which we seldom did.
(no wonder my sisters and I ended up as language teachers rather than engineers).