Where my authors at?

[kaitou]

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?

Comments

[kaitou1412.livejournal.com]

I used to have a good chunk of the Howdunnit books before I let someone borrow them and they stopped coming to our meetings. Grr.

I totally agree that edutainment kicks ass. Way cooler when you can come away going 'and it's even true!'