What is your life as a reader like? Do you read for work, pleasure, instructions or emails? What is your favorite author and/or genre? What is your favorite reading spot? What did you like to read when you were the age of your students?Reading has been a constant in my life since before I was school age. I read for work, constantly scanning feeds for resources I can share with my faculty or ideas for student projects. Most days, I read blogs and tweets and articles online and in print. I also read for pleasure, averaging about four or five books a week, more if we're on vacation. As a high school librarian, I read a lot of YA literature, but my favorite genre is that of British domestic fiction, classics like D.E. Stevenson and Barbara Pym and newer comfort reading like Maeve Binchy, Sophie Kinsella, and Joanna Trollope. I adore Agatha Christie. Phillip Roth is another of my favorites, he seldom disappoints. I have also discovered over the past few years that I have a bit of a taste for science fiction. I still have a hard time with "fantasy."
When I was in high school, I read most of what I came into contact with -- classics, lurid Jacqueline Susann and Judith Krantz novels, some YA. I liked the Sunfire historical romance series and Maggie Adams, Dancer and Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington and Marjorie Morningstar by Howard Wouk. I re-read Gone with the Wind and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn regularly. I read American Psycho in high school, and, pretentiously enough, Ezra Pound's Cantos. I loved Katherine Anne Porter and Sylvia Plath and Erica Jong and Rona Jaffe pretty equally. I thought Absalom, Absalom! was the best book I was required to read for school, with To the Lighthouse a close second.
Thanks, Melanie, for giving me license to think about this for a little bit. I'm not sure I'll be in every week, but I'm excited for the Book that Changed your Life...
