I called this site “A Study of Reading Habits,” but really I don’t write about my reading habits much. I can describe my habits, though. I think I’ll describe them according to why I read them.

Comfort

Mainly, I read in bed, just before I go to sleep. If I read something too troubling or thought-provoking or scary at that time, then either I won’t fall asleep or I’ll fall asleep and have terrible dreams. So before bed, I tend to read genre novels–because I know sort of what to expect. And I especially like to read genre novels (mysteries and fantasy novels, with some science fiction) that are part of a series, because then I really, really know what to expect and can judge whether I should be reading it before bed. And in addition to that, I tend to re-read a lot of my series novels.

In the past few months, for example, I’ve re-read for bajillionth time all the Lindsey Davis/Didius Falco Roman mystery novels. Plus I read the most recent two of those for the first time. That’s 18 novels.

I also re-read four old Barbara Hambly novels (the Dark books, plus A Stranger at the Wedding) and two newer ones (the Raven sisters books). I re-read an old Tanya Huff book (The Fire’s Stone) and the sixth Harry Potter and all the Vimes books by Terry Pratchett.

I’m sure I re-read more than that, but that’s all I can think of right now.

Entertainment

In the past few months, I read some books I hadn’t read before: the new Harry Potter and a young adult novel called Haters. Those were both entertaining. I read Haters because I went to a writing conference and my workshop teacher was the author, Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez. (She was a hilarious and attentive teacher, and she’s a great writer.)

And I got the new Tanya Huff book in the her space opera series, which rocks (both the series and the new book). I listened to two new Charlaine Harris books in series I’ve been reading (the one about the vampires and the one about the chick who feels dead people).

Then a blog entry within a blog entry got me interested in Nicola Griffith, so I tracked down her first two Aud Torvingen books, The Blue Place and Stay, which are pretty cool noirish kind of books. I like them a lot, though in the second one, Aud is recovering from the death of someone close to her, and I kept being annoyed because that character never felt to me like a fully developed character, so I can’t figure out why Aud is so fucked up over it. But aside from that, these books are good, and I’m planning to get ahold of the third one.

Finally, I read Michael Chabon’s new novel, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, which was so good I can’t even write about it.

Sports/Fitness

I like to read books and magazines about the physical activities I enjoy, so I read a lot of stuff about yoga and running and occasionally some stuff about bicycling. I . . . somehow never end up reading a whole book, though, because I skip over the stuff I already know and troll the index for things I’m interested in.

A few months back, though, I got re-interested in skating, so I read most of Rollergirl (about Austin’s recent roller derby resurgence) and skimmed Inline! (a how-to guide). I read only part of these books not because they’re bad or anything. I got more interested in doing some actual skating, so my non-bedtime reading time was limited. (No nonfiction at bedtime. I don’t know why. This is just a rule.) And then I hurt my stupid hip, so I had to lay off skating altogether, and I certainly didn’t want to read about it.

I skimmed through Chi Running, Body, Mind, and Sport, and Yoga for Depression. I’ve just started Jeff Davis’s book about yoga and writing, called The Journey from the Center to the Page (also because of the writing conference).

Influence of Other People

My brother has gotten interested in chef-ing and recommended some audiobooks about it, so I listened to Kitchen Confidential (I know, a decade after everyone else read it) and I’m now listening to Bill Buford’s Heat. My conclusion so far is that restaurant kitchens are just like I remember them, even though the ones I worked in were all crappy franchises and not at all like the starred restaurants described in those books. And also, chefs are a bunch of nutty motherfuckers.

I guess there are other reasons I read, too, but these have been the ones influencing my reading this year.

I got this from Audible because Nick Hornby told me to read it. The whole time I listened to it, I couldn’t stop talking about it.

The book is set in 1980, just before the Carter-Reagan election. Vince is a very minor mob guy from New York who rolled on some other mob guys and then got put in witness protection and moved to Spokane. Since he was a convicted felon from his teens, Vince has never been able to vote. But with his new identity, he gets a voter registration card. He gets excited about voting. He asks everybody around him who they’re voting for, and why. And then he gets all fucked around by various mob guys and petty criminals.

It’s just an awesomely entertaining book, and you can read it as a neat little mobbish caper or as a comment on citizenship and responsibility or both. I’ll be checking out Walter’s other novels, and I’ll definitely reread Citizen Vince. Maybe even on paper this time!

The reader on the Audible version is pretty good; he has a great accent for the voice of the novel.

I’m way behind on writing about what I’ve been reading. But I do want to get this down.

A few months ago, my bookclub read Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings. It’s very short and very charming. I was hoping it would be about her writing and what she thought about it, but mostly it was about her childhood in Jackson, Mississippi. I was only a little disappointed, but not much, because the book is really engaging.

I took the opportunity to reread some of my favorite stories of Welty’s and then I found a recording (on Audible) of her reading three stories—”Why I Live at the P.O.,”  “Powerhouse,” and “Petrified Man.” I really recommend this if you like Welty. Her voice is so lovely, and her accent is just awesome. I grew up in Arkansas, and have also lived in Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mississippi itself, but it took me a few minutes to adjust my ear to Welty’s accent and be able to hear the separate words. She reads very fast, and with hilarious emphasis on the funny parts. I loved this recording, and I command you all to get it and listen to it.

This is another bookclub book. I got it on audio, and it took me more than a month to get through it. Not because it’s a bad book. It’s a really good book. It’s just a slow, thoughtful book without much of a plot. A 77-year-old preacher is writing to his 6-year-old son. The preacher knows he will die soon, and he wants to leave something of himself for his son to read when he grows up.

I did love the old guy. He is kind and sad, sometimes really naive. He contemplates his relationship with his son, and his wife, and his best friend (another old preacher), and his best friend’s son, whom he tends to think is a scoundrel.

It’s a wonderful character study and an interesting exploration of families and religion and society. But man, if you’re listening to something while you walk or jog, it should really not be this. (Although the reader of the Audible version is really good.)

I read this book several times when I was in college. I loved it so much that, for my required history-minor thesis, I wrote about one of the Agrippinas. And there you see how my memory is completely failing, because I can’t remember which one. Or rather, I can sort of remember. It was the one that was married to Claudius for a while and was Nero’s mother (not that Claudius was Nero’s father; it’s all very complicated). But I can’t remember if she was Caligula’s sister or Claudius’s niece or what. I could look it up. But that would not demonstrate for you just how my memory—which is famously good, as my family will tell you—is going.

I don’t know quite what to think about that. It’s my memory! And it’s famous. And now I’m losing it.

But aside from my personal crisis, this is an entertaining book. It’s more of a soap opera than any soap opera on tv in my lifetime. The followup, Claudius the God, is also pretty good. I just reread I, Claudius, after about 13 years, because my bookclub picked it for this month.

Now that I think about it, this book was responsible for the beginning of my enduring interest in Ancient Rome. If, by enduring interest, you understand that I mean that I once wrote a paper about it, I read two mystery series set in first-century Rome, and I love the citybuilding PC game Caesar (Caesar IV, just released!). That’s all very intellectual, isn’t it? Soap operas, mysteries, and a computer game.