kaitou: (Jon Stewart)
kaitou ([personal profile] kaitou) wrote2008-03-05 02:41 pm

Where my authors at?

Whenever I visit my parents, or have them over for any length of time we end up watching TV. Not just TV, but fiction TV. We watch Ugly Betty, Lost, The Women's Murder Club, Cold Case, ect, ect. And almost every time I think to myself, "This is a great show!" But when I'm alone again, I never watch them, even when nothing's on. Instead I always find myself riveted to Dirty Jobs, How It's Made, Engineering an Empire, Dog Genius, ect, ect. I am totally addicted to nonfiction, nonreality TV (Project Runway excepted).

And that got me to thinking about my reading habits too. I'd say maybe a fifth of my English books are fiction. And a good section of that is kids & YA books I mean to pass down someday (By the Great Horn Spoon is an unappreciated gem). The rest of it is all history, science, memoir, how-to and such. My current reading & to read shelf has a book about tracking stolen paintings, the history of salt, a book about an ancient greek explorer, and a book about supervolcanoes.

I've heard it said that you should read voraciously in the genre you want to write in. And I've also heard it said that you want to avoid reading your genre to avoid unconsciously copying. And for me, at least the past few years, it's been all about nonfiction books. So, other writers on the flist...what do you read the most?
velithya: (Default)

[personal profile] velithya 2008-03-06 08:50 am (UTC)(link)
My traditional happy place genre is fantasy (and SF, but mainly fantasy). I haven't been reading much apart from fanfic for a while, though.

[identity profile] kaitou1412.livejournal.com 2008-03-06 12:24 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, fantasy...or even manga hasn't been the happy place that it once was for me. (manga probably still would be if I was still in Japan) And I still chew through a lot of fanfic, but I think my happy place has definitely shifted to documentaries and nonfiction books. Other than the Daily Show & Colbert Report my tv viewing wasn't affected by the Writer's strike at all.