i may be a bird in a cage but at least it's your cage

last night, before we went to see order of the phoenix, triskellita and i were putzing around in barnes & noble as we're wont to do, complete with me scribbling down titles i want to get from the library since i can't afford books unless they cost a one dollar hold fee at the chpl. while we were wandering around, t. said that she felt like she should read more "normal" fiction, that is to say -- less of the genre fiction she loves.

and i sort of went, well, why? because the thing is: i read. i read a lot. like, if i am working full-time (or as it were at the moment, working from home almost full-time, the point being, not in school), i will get through five or six books a week. and that's if they're non-fiction; i'll plow through fiction even faster than that. i read a lot.

but i am well aware that while i read a lot, i don't necessarily read widely, and that's never really bothered me. (except when i go on a mystery novel binge and then have to read non-fiction for two weeks afterwards to make my brain stop feeling like i've rotted it with janet evanovich and carolyn hart.) i enjoy what i read; why should i change my habits, you know?

i like non-fiction about sports, and food, and travel, and i've never been particularly interested in history unless it's a history of place. (if anyone would like to read a delightful book about prague, for example: prague pictures by john banville, highly recommended.) i don't read a lot of science or math non-fiction, though sometimes i try and always re-discover that i don't really enjoy it, though there have been exceptions (prime obsession by john derbyshire; a tour of the calculus, which is my current bedtime reading; chaos). when i read fiction, i'm preferential to novels set in the (modern) south, in chicago, in baltimore, and to mysteries that are light on the romance and heavy on the procedural (be it police or forensics procedural), or at least have an engaging (southern) setting (see also: james lee burke, carolyn hart) or a protagonist i love (janet evanovich, carolyn hart again); i read sara paretsky because she writes about chicago like the way i love chicago. i don't enjoy much historical fiction. i don't really enjoy experimental novels. i read some fantasy and i prefer my scifi more fi than sci (highly recommended: only begotten daughter, john morrow). i'm a nut for young adult fiction even though i'm 27. and i always scan the new book shelves at the public library (my love for the chapel hill public library: CANNOT BE TEXTUALLY RENDERED), and if something looks good, i at least bring it home before deciding 50 pages in that it's not for me.

but there's still a lot of books i don't read. there's books i take back to the library only 25 pages in because they didn't do it for me. but despite that, i read in large volume, and so does t. -- there's no way i can read every book in the world before i die, you know? so is it really a problem that i only read in certain genres or styles? should i try harder to expand my reading tastes? do you guys read in limited genres, or what?

mostly i'm still fishing for book recs, and i want you to talk to me about what you're reading this summer, okay? BESIDES THE NEW HARRY POTTER. a majority of the planet is going to read the new harry potter, you can skip that one. :P