Going by The Book

Sereni Linggi and Shentel Lee are sharing their love for the written word with the Iban women of Semembai, Sarawak, by contributing towards the Semembai Literacy Project.

Christopher Morley, American journalist and author of Parnassus on Wheels and Kitty Foyle, once said: “When you give a man a book, you don’t give him just 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue.

You give him a whole new life.” Indeed, over the years, books have transported young children to faraway places, such as the mystical island of Neverland, enabled Malaysians to experience the Pinochet dictatorship through the eyes of Chilean writer Isabel Allende and, more recently, allowed George W Bush to explain his innermost thoughts when he made that fateful decision to invade Iraq.

For Sereni Linggi and Shentel Lee, co-founders of Sereni & Shentel, a fashion label that specialises in hair accessories, reading is at the centre of their lives. In fact, one of the many things that this dynamic duo has in common is their shared love for non-fiction literature.

“We love reading and will always head straight to the bookstores whenever we are in a shopping mall,” says the 30-year-old Lee. “Quite coincidentally, we both share a love for nonfiction and love reading biographies and true stories of various personalities,” she adds.

Sereni’s reading list ranges from theories on martial arts, physics, politics, the spiritual, religion, fashion and method acting to biographies of people who have inspired her such as Bruce Lee, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Nikola Tesla. “I love the autobiographies of Barbara Walters and Janice Dickenson, biographies on Truman Capote and Isabelle Blow and, of course, the classic Roald Dahl reads like Matilda and The Twits.”

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