How Sidney Sheldon Taught Me to Read
The previous week, we discussed the “canon”—authoritative works that are most representative or central in their period or genre—the literature with capital L. The task that day was to score, on a scale of 1 to 10, genre fiction that came out in recent memory, and see if they were evocative of the literary flux of the 1990s and 2000s. Our professor contends that this is a rather presumptuous activity, but she wanted to see which literary works we would consider to be worthy of the canon.
The book cover on the screen was Sidney Sheldon’s The Other Side of Midnight, one of the most beloved and probably the most well-known work of the writer whose career as a novelist spanned the last three decades of his life.
“Why three?” the professor asked.
“It’s formulaic,” someone answered. “You’ve read one Sheldon, you’ve read them all.”
“He’s just… everywhere,” another remarked.
I live for discourses like this. Today though, I was quiet. The cover on the screen was too familiar, and it brought me warm memories. Also, my opinion could not be too cogent. Sheldon was the author who taught me how to read.
I went to high school in rural Philippines during the early 2000s. Cell phones had just become the rage then. Social media was not really a thing. Entertainment was limited to television, FM radio and books. I remember that my first year in high school was befuddling. I was enrolled in a Catholic school, and I was curious about a lot of things.
My mother told me that I was an early reader, and I started making out words at two. As a child, I did not watch a lot of anime or cartoons. I was more absorbed by my father’s subscriptions to Reader’s Digest, TIME and Health and Home. I would sometimes read my aunt’s collection of crime anthologies and biographies of criminals, but I was not really exposed to fiction. I first read fiction more raptly in the same way that most students have: for a book report.
It started pretentiously. During the proposals, we boasted titles that we think would be the most challenging to read and write about. The titles were straight from American and English literature syllabi: To Kill a Mockingbird, Beowulf, J. R. R. Tolkien, Faulkner, Hemingway, Orwell and Woolf, among others.
Our teacher was either sympathetic to our ungodly requirements or maybe just wanted to mitigate plagiarism (the Internet was starting to be a favorite source during this time), but either way, she instructed us to read something more contemporary, something easier to read: a book we would read for pleasure.
I did enjoy Lord of the Rings when I was in elementary, and I wore out my aunt’s copies, but there are some parts that are abysmally incomprehensible for a poorly exposed young reader such as myself. Sometimes, I’ll just read through it completely, without really understanding. So, when my Tolkien proposal was not approved, my aunt recommended I read Sidney Sheldon.
The book was If Tomorrow Comes. Like every Sheldon heroine, the protagonist, Tracy Whitney, is beautiful and ferociously intelligent. Like some Sheldon heroine, Tracy is living a contented life that is thrown off course by a male-orchestrated complication.
Our classroom became a mystery book club, and we were in great company. The contemporary classics we proposed were replaced by works of Sheldon, John Grisham, Mary Higgins Clark, James Patterson, Patricia Cornwell and Michael Crichton, among others.
It was interesting how that changed the general conversation in our classroom. Discussions of characters replaced the query for crushes. We were more curious about the people on our pages than those on campus. I was in an advanced high school program, and the pubescent urge to show off hobbies and skills (and the constant lowkey flex of one’s family wealth) was replaced with disputes over who in class is reading potentially the most difficult title or author. In the face of fiction, we were equals.
It was easier to win the contest with the top student in our class, Danielle, also picking up a Sheldon. The idea of joining a book club came to me only in university, but I had a version of it in high school.
During recess, Danielle and I would converse, crackers and paperback in hand, ruminating over a line, excitedly reading sections we loved, and ultimately, imagining our future selves in the larger world waiting for us, the one outside of high school, ignited by the posh and providence in Sheldon’s fiction. The novels taught us to dream big.
Personally, to hunt for books became a vice. Whenever we were in the city, I would rummage through book stalls and sales for Sheldons. I fell in love with reading lists, crossing off titles I had found and read.
Our reading circle got larger, and we explored more authors. Danielle’s mother was a savant for genre fiction, and we raided her collection. This prodded us to look for more to trade. There would always be a book borrowed and unreturned, and collaterals were enforced. This practice earned me the best friends I got to keep for life: Carl and his Grishams, Corelle and the Sheldons she got from her sisters, and Honey’s crime anthologies.
Critics rave about Sheldon in synonymous expressions: “Ravishing!” or “Irresistible!” or even “Delicious!” Sheldon, who started his career as a screenwriter and playwright, called it the “technique of the old Saturday afternoon serial,” the idea of a book that is hard to put down, ending a chapter with a cliffhanger to facilitate interest and investment for just one more chapter, until one ends up reading the whole book. I got a perfect score for that report, but it ignited more in me as a growing reader, and later, writer.
What made the reading experience unique with Sheldon was its accessibility, and its offer of a rather cinematic experience that seems plausible for anyone. For a a young reader, it provided a form of escape. As I grew older, it became a blueprint.
“Our classroom became a mystery book club, and we were in great company.”
The books taught us the things we needed to understand about relationships, trust, dependence and later, in adolescence, our bodies. Raised by conservative parents, we had questions that we were too shy to ask. Sheldon’s novels bridged that, but we also learned about self-esteem, worth and independence.
I also appreciated language. Sheldon’s fiction involves biting wit, and this shows in his storytelling, in the dialogues. His fiction has a fast pace, but it is easy to build images around. Words have sound and smell. In the moments where the suspense is intense, you can also almost hear everything, like a Hollywood film, to be savored, tucked and remembered.
Sidney Sheldon’s works became a bible for us. We did not recite verses. To comfort and uplift ourselves during difficult times in university and later in our early exposure to adulting, we invoked what his heroines did. Carl remembered a particular chapter. Danielle would cite a line.
“What do you think?” my professor asked me during my turn for recitation.
“Sheldon taught a generation to read,” I said.
It would be difficult to score that legacy.
Ian Layugan hails from Baguio City and is currently based in Gunma Prefecture, Japan where he works with the Kiryu City Board of Education under the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme. He has written for Rappler and has led research projects for Oxfam, Asmae International, and the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore. Follow him on Instagram/Twitter at @ijlayugan.
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