What Kinds of Books Do You Read for Pleasure?

I cant really pick just one catagory because I will read anything for fun.

I can finish about 4 books a month and they vary in styles, writters, best sellers ( or not ) ..


In fact , I just finished The Secret Lives of Bees..

ohh.. wonderful WONDERFUL book. :-)

books?

Phoenix: I read almost everything except Science Fiction. I love a good mystery, especially if it is well written. Denise Mina and Ian Rankin of Scotland are two favorites.

I tend to read non-fiction first though...I have a great love of history...biography...and some historical novels. I am presently on a Revolutionary War kick and that includes books on George Washington.

I live near two Civil War battlefields...Antietam and Gettysburg, so I will read almost anything that concerns the Civil War.

Anything except self-help.

hmmmmmmm I did read Dogs for Dummies, but that wasn't exactly for pleasure.

Yup, anything else.

There are sweltering summer Sundays where I'll go into the backyard, drag my chair under the neighbour's jasmine vines and read a dozen or so romances.

Other times I'm reading history or mystery or biographies (which are sorta history) or sci-fi.

My latest reading preference for subway travel is anthologies. I've been picking up anthologies on a variety of themes, and if I like a particular author I've discovered in the anthology I'll go pick up more of their work.

In the last group of anthologies was a collection of stories by women about fishing, and one about beaches.

In general, I read far less these days than has been usual for the whole rest of my life. Up until when kid was born, I was 1-4 books/ week (depending on the book). Now it's... far less than that. I read the New Yorker cover to cover, and much of the New York Times, but I have a growing backlog of books I want to read.

I had to pick "other" because I don't choose a book simply because it is fiction or not, Sci-fi or biography, or whatever. I examine the book jacket, the description of it, read some pages. If it succeeds in engaging me, I purchase it.

edgar- I rarely buy a book in a retail store. The last book that I bought at Barnes and Noble was "Windows XP Pro- The Missing Manual". Got that a few years ago when I changed over from Win 98 to XP.

We have a great library in our community that stocks the stuff that I read. Often, they will sell excess copies of paperback editions for a buck or two. I find that I am not that concerned about whether the book has been published last week, or a few years ago.

Come to think of it, I feel the same way about movies. I rarely go to the movies, but wait until the film is on DVD, and then get it through Blockbuster Online.

I frequent Half Price Books more often than any other place.

I've always escaped into Fantasy and Science Fiction and nice, cozy murders.

Lately I've been reading memoirs and travel writing. I'm also into Social History.

I love to read good mysteries, and Patricia Highsmith is one of my favorite authors.

Mostly history, but I do every so often read a biography.

I have a bio of Bertrand Russell, that I've had for several years...every time I pick it up I get a few pages in then something happens, and I lay it back down again.

bm

Interesting. I'll be back!

For the most part I read non fiction. Mostly, Romance, Fantasy, Crime/Murder/Suspense, I would like to read some Louis L'Amour also.

bm

I'll be back too!!

Lately I find myself unintentionally drawn to Australian writer. I'm not even aware that the writer is Australian until I start the book.

Go figure.

I'll read anything - old/recent, fiction/non, library/used/new. I'm not interested in self-help books anymore, but went thru a phase of reading them in my teens/20s.

That's interesting boomer. Which writer? I'm curious.

Right now I'm reading "The Sooterkin" by Tom Gilling and I just finished "The Seven Types of Ambiguity" by Elliot Perlman.

Within the last year of so I read "The History Of The Kelly Gang" by Peter Carey and "Gould's Book of Fish" by Richard Flanagan. (I need to reread "Gould's..." because even as I was reading it I knew I was missing a lot.

Actually, I could probably reread "The History..." again for the same reason.

Both of those books challenged me.

"The Seven Types..." was amazingly fun and fascinating. I could hardly put it down.

Richard Flanagan & Peter Carey, boomer! You certainly seem to read very widely. Are you a major, major book worm?