Top Ten Tuesday – Changes in My Reading Life

CHANGES IN MY READING LIFE

Genre

I used to be almost exclusively a historical/historical romance reader, to the point where the first time I read a contemporary-set novel, it felt like a culture shock to have people talking about mobile phones and so on! These days, I’ll read pretty much anything, notable exclusions being horror, erotica, and similar. I’m still not a big sci-fi reader, but I will definitely pick it up if I have the right inducement (like a favourite author… *ahem* looking at you, Ronie Kendig and Brand of Light).

Format

If you’d asked me ten years ago whether I would trade in the sensory delight of a paperback for the sterile genericism of a Kindle (technically, the Kindle app on my iPad), I would have laughed in your face. And now I would be eating my words…or at least my laughter. Thanks to Kindle, I can read in bed in the dark, I don’t have to remember what page I was up to, I can highlight my favourite passages and come back to them easily whenever the whim strikes, I can carry 3000+ books with me wherever I go… The benefits are endless!

Number

I used to be a monogamous reader—strictly one book at a time. Not so now. I do have a limit (like, at one point, I was editing one story, reading another in paperback form for judging, reading another in eBook form for reviewing, listening to one on audio with my kids in the car, and listening to another audio myself when doing housework etc. That was a little crazy!), but I regularly have two or three on the go at any one time: usually one on my Kindle, one I’m listening to with my kids (we just finished the entire Harry Potter series, and are now doing the entire Chronicles of Narnia), and one that I listen to when in the car by myself or doing housework (just finished Charlotte Bronte’s Villette).

Place

I used to not be able to read in the car, but that’s changed a little bit now. So long as I’m holding the book or my iPad up so that I’m not looking down into my lap, I can usually read pretty comfortably, even on longer journeys. So long as I’m not driving of course!

Reason

I probably should have led with this one, because it’s perhaps one of the biggest changes in my reading life: I blog about books! This means that a lot of the books I read are new releases, whereas I used to just pick up whatever took my fancy at that point in time. Quite often, I’m reviewing books I would have picked up anyway, but I also get asked to review books by authors looking for reviews and exposure on my blog, and that sometimes means having to hold off on reading that book you’re practically salivating over because you’re committed to reading a few others first. #currentproblems

Tastes

I guess this is similar to genre, or at least goes hand-in-hand with reading more widely in terms of genre, but books like The Hunger Games and Harry Potter were way out of my comfort zone ten years ago, yet I’ve since read and thoroughly enjoyed both series and many others that I can’t think of off the top of my head. When I was younger, I very much liked to read within my comfort zone, but now I enjoy being stretched and challenged. I love being stimulated to think about big picture themes or whether or not I agree with the direction an author has taken a story. I guess you could say I enjoy stories on an intellectual level as well as on an entertainment level. 

I’ve also become more selective about writing styles and characterisation—two big determiners for whether I will enjoy a story regardless of genre. As a result, some authors I used to really enjoy don’t appeal to me so much any more. 😢