Reading Choices

Booking Through Thursday (that's a link) weekly meme:

Have your reading choices changed over the years? Or pretty much stayed the same? (And yes, from childhood to adulthood we usually read different things, but some people stick to basically the same kind of book their entire lives, so…)

I was JUST thinking about this yesterday, actually! I was thinking about how even though some of my favorite books NOW are "children's lit" I didn't actually read them as a child. I didn't read Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, Howl's Moving Castle, Ballet Shoes, etc, until the last 10-ish years.

Anyway let's try and go through this chronologically:

Years 0-12: I'm going to lump this all together because I really didn't read much in these years. I mean, yes, I liked reading, and I would get piles of picture books and what-not from the library, but I didn't do my research well. Also, I was an enormous animal: horse nerd so a lot of my reading was the Thoroughbred series, Margaret Henry, Walter Farley, etc. One of my favorite chapter books was Harriet the Spy, and I enjoyed the Little House on the Prairie books. I also checked out Big Bear's Book from the library possibly 100 times. I didn't read Goodnight Moon until high school, the same for Where the Wild Things Are. I eventually discovered the Young Jedi Knights book series, as well as Redwall, around 12 or so, and devoured those. I already loved Star Wars but finding sci-fi/fantasy books like these is probably what started my current life as a super-nerd.

Years 13-18: I discovered Tolkien around, oh, December 26th, 2001. XD I thank God those movies were made, because otherwise I might never have picked up the books (they always looked too big and scary and SRS BSNS). I read those at least 6 times that first year, and also started reading the other Tolkien books: The Hobbit, Sil, etc. Once I realized how Completely Awesome fantasy was (many, many years too late), I started trying out all the other big books in the Tolkien-fantasy genre, such as Narnia, Earthsea, Wheel of Time, etc. Other big books of this period: Paolini (restrain your shudders), Diana Wynne Jones, adult Star Wars (now that I knew I could read "big books"), and more Redwall. Star Wars led to Timothy Zahn, which led to more adult sci-fi, but I was very picky. I dabbled in Christian fiction (Frank Peretti, Left Behind series) but the main books that I still enjoy and recommend are Melody Carlson's books, particularly Diary of a Teenage Girl series.

Years 19-21: Going into college, I made BOOKISH FRIENDS who have helped and continue to help me expand my reading material greatly. I've gotten way more into YA than I ever have been (although I'm still extremely picky >.>) and have been catching up on some children's classics, but still mostly continuing in my favorite veins: kids or adult fantasy or sci-fi. Jasper Fforde, Naomi Novik, Hilari Bell, Terry Pratchett, James A. Owen, Cornelia Funke, Mervyn Peake, Elizabeth Marie Pope and Frank Herbert are all big authors of this period so far. I also started reading GOOD Christian fiction and non-fiction, by GK Chesterton, CS Lewis, and George MacDonald. Probably the biggest Book Effect of college, though, is my acquired love of classics (*waves to English majors*). Henry James, Jane Austen, and Conan Doyle are my current classics-loves but they change rapidly. I'm guessing I'll be specializing in 19th c. lit. XD Although I also have a soft spot for medieval romance.

So, current genres are fantasy, sci-fi, and classics, and those can be in kids, YA, or adult. :)

This turned out a lot longer than I thought it would be: sorry!