Monday, September 6, 2010

My writing life - Reading habits

I've been reading for many years, actually since I was four. I have come to the conclusion I am a spree reader. I find a new writer I like and I want to read everything they've written. This can be costly since sometimes their back lists are hard to find. I also tend to read in genres when I do this. I remember reading all the Dick Francis mysteries, all the Mercedes Lackey fantasies, all the Nora Roberts romances I could find, one after another. I also have read all of Tolstoy, all of Jane Austen, all of Frank Slaughter. I also reread books, many times. Pride and Prejudice has been read sixteen times, When I began writing I was in a small town where the library had few books so I read Zane Gray, some not too bad. I also did a study on my own of early American fiction and read some interesting books. Shakespeare and John Donne for poetry, not to mention Robert Frost. What really bothers me is that there are so many books I haven't read and many more I haven't written. There are books I've read that I hate and would never care to revisit. There are also books on my keeper shelves that I've been rereading and wonder why I kept them. Styles of writing change. Hopefully in my own writing, I can continue to change and grow.

3 comments:

  1. Hi Janet!
    I tend to search out an author's backlist also, usually via the library. That's become a problem for me with e-books. But if a 'new to me' author has a backlist going back years, I typically don't request the older work as it's their present style I enjoy and often times I've been disappointed by the wordiness of older books.

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  2. HI Janet,
    I can relate to your post. When I find an author I love, I go overboard and gorge on everything that person has written. I also do the same with genre, when I am on a Stephen King or Dean Koontz fest, I drown in the thriller/horror genre until I need to come up for air. Then I go crazy with my romance novels. The best is when I discover a new author who wrote a series. I will promptly go out and order every book in the series and read them one after another. Hmmm, someone once said I have an addictive personality. Guess so.

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  3. Me too.

    I try to read them in order though. Especially if it's a series with reappearing characters (that have morphed from seconardy to h/h or the other way around), such as Roxanne St. Claire's Bullet Catcher Series (they were all out but the last when they were new to me) and Nalini Singh's Psy-Changelings (all of which are out, new one still being written) and I'm about to embark on Book 4.

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