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Have your book-tastes changed over the years? More fiction? Less? Books that are darker and more serious? Lighter and more frivolous? Challenging? Easy? How-to books over novels? Mysteries over Romance?
My book tastes have changed quite a lot for someone as young as I am, or so I think. When I was younger, I read mostly YA novels, but I didn’t really have a specific focus, I just read whatever I could find, and usually multiple times. My first “adult” books were romance novels, mostly because that was what my mom read. After a short time, I specifically latched onto historical romance, mostly because I really love history and didn’t quite realize it at the time. In high school, I made a friend who recommended the Wheel of Time to me, and there began my love affair with fantasy novels. So, for a while, I was reading romance and fantasy pretty much exclusively, although I never really noticed that none of my favorite books were romance – I did notice that they got same-y after a while, though, and by the end of high school I was embarrassed to be reading them at all, so I stopped.
I went to college and barely read at all for the first year and a half, except for required reading for my English major and a few books over the summer. I was unhappy during most of this time, except while I was in England, and looking back I think losing my guaranteed “escape” made it a lot worse. My brother (my only sibling) passed away in December 2005 from non-Hodgkins lymphoma and I realized that I really needed to read again, so as a distraction I began my first ever list of how many books I read. Around this time I also realized that I really, really loved history, in particular medieval history, not only as a setting for romance novels but as a subject and as a setting for all sorts of other novels. This is a love that I suspect has existed all my life, because I recall that my favorite books from childhood were often either fantasy or set in medieval Europe. In 2006 I read 76 books, largely historical fiction and fantasy. At the end of 2006, I discovered LibraryThing, and my reading skyrocketed, because in 2007 I read 139 books, again mostly composed of historical fiction, fantasy, and history. So far, these have remained constant, although I have been introducing a bit more modern literature into my TBR piles ever since I read The Remains of the Day last year.
So, there is my reading history, long and complex and boring for everyone but me I’m sure!
What is reading, anyway? Novels, comics, graphic novels, manga, e-books, audiobooks — which of these is reading these days? Are they all reading? Only some of them? What are your personal qualifications for something to be “reading” — why? If something isn’t reading, why not? Does it matter? Does it impact your desire to sample a source if you find out a premise you liked the sound of is in a format you don’t consider to be reading? Share your personal definition of reading, and how you came to have that stance.
Fundamentally, reading is the act of seeing words and understanding their meaning. Deriving concepts from otherwise meaningless symbols. I learned to do this when I was five and I would say most children learn about the same time. In a wider sense, when I say that I am reading, I am usually reading a book. When you say you like to read, you don’t mean that you like the act of reading, interpreting symbols, but that you enjoy reading about something, like in a book or the newspaper. If you say you like to read, you generally don’t mean that you enjoy reading the sides of cereal boxes, although it is technically reading and we all do it. I don’t really consider listening to an audiobook “reading”, and if I had “read” a book in that format I’d probably say so when talking about it. I still think it’s valuable to do so, though, and if that’s the way you like to hear stories I’m all for it, it just isn’t actually reading.
So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that fundamentally reading is looking at words and understanding them. In a narrower sense, reading is understanding lots of those words in the context of a story or some wider meaning, like a news article. We all read a lot on the internet, but I wouldn’t consider someone who has never by choice cracked open a book a reader. Perhaps I would consider someone who reads a lot of magazines or newspapers one, but not someone who just reads out of necessity and not for pleasure. Would I consider someone who only listens to audiobooks a reader? Probably not, unless they were also a reader of books and circumstances forced them to listen only, such as eye problems.
These distinctions don’t matter too much in the great scheme of things, though – I wish everyone loved reading as much as I do, and whatever way you do it, I’m glad that you do!
Books and films both tell stories, but what we want from a book can be different from what we want from a movie. Is this true for you? If so, what’s the difference between a book and a movie?
It’s definitely true for me. Books and movies convey things in very different ways. Movies can be more subtle – conveying emotion and expression through a glance or a touch, or using a beautiful landscape to convey location. Books have to be more descriptive and can thus be boring or fail to evoke a particular place. Books, however, also allow us to place our own stamp on a particular story and bring our own experiences to the table, more so because characters usually remain faceless. They allow us to go deeper and become friends in our minds with characters we love. There is no fourth wall, and there is in the movies just as there is on the stage. They also can give a much deeper view of character and how people’s minds work. In my opinion, there can be much more to a book than there is to a movie. Of course, I do love movies, but most of them by their very length and nature must omit my favorite qualities – deep complexity, deeper storytelling, and in-depth character insight. It’s much harder to get these things from a screen than it is from the written word.
Not surprisingly, when I’ve seen a movie derived from a book, I almost always enjoy the book more, even if I read the book after seeing the film. At the moment I can’t actually think of any exceptions, though there are some, I’m certain of it. I understand that things must be cut out and I do often enjoy seeing a favorite story enacted on screen, but nothing compares to sitting down and reading through a book.
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