What kinds of books do you read?

Some readers are loyal to one genre of fiction, heading directly to the romance or mystery sections of the bookstore and rarely browsing any of the other sections.

Some readers read nearly everything they can get their hands on, regardless of the “label.”

Other readers read only literary fiction, turning their noses up at those “little books” that make the best seller lists and earn money for their authors.

And still others wouldn’t touch a book described as literary if it were the only thing left to read.

Where do you stand, and why?

I will admit that I tend to be in the fourth category a bit. I took, my last semester in college, a course called “20th Century Novel.” As a reader of fiction and someone who yearned to actually write a novel of her own, I thought this would be an easy course to finish out my required number of credits. Some of the books, I will admit, I enjoyed.The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion (Oxford World’s Classics) by Ford Maddox Ford and even wrote a paper on it, getting a B on the paper. Another book I liked, to my surprise, was The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway.
However, much of the course was about books that didn’t seem to have any meaning or purpose to me and the professor was obsessed with analyzing the symbols in the books.

I read for pleasure and I write the same way. I hope my books aren’t used in college courses because I don’t want kids to HAVE to read them and then be bored out of their socks by some professor trying to find some deep meaning in my prose. I write my books to entertain, and I read for the same reason.

I do tend to head straight for the romance section of the bookstore. I like to see my friends’ names out there and I like to see what’s being published. I do, however, stray sometimes to the fantasy section, looking for books written about female character by female authors. Then I head to the mystery section and dream of having time to read all those funny, modern cozies that I want to write, too!

So, tell, me, dear reader, who are you and what do you read?