long time

holy shit, i can't believe i've been posting here for five years. that's a lot of books!!!

looking thru my posts tho, i noticed that my taste in reading has really changed. before college i read almost exclusively fiction. i want to say i only read fiction, but i don't know everything i read so... then i started reading memoirs, and i still love a good travel memoir. in 2007, science and history stuff creep in. then starting in mid 2010, i started reading almost exclusively non-fiction.

today i rarely read fiction. i think fiction gets tiring after a while. there are only so many stories, you know? (i think 7, tho sometimes i think only 3) and also, there are so many good books out there, so why would i want to read the same thing over and over? i have limited time (and budget!), so i should learn something, no? which is why i love reading science stuff now.

i do sometimes feel like i'm missing out tho. i haven't read any of the harry potters, twilights, or steig larsson books (girl with the dragon tattoo...)... the last fictional series i read was dan brown's da vinci code stuff (which isn't really a series, cause it's only two books). harry potter is interesting tho. those were pretty big even when i was in high school yet i've always resisted reading them. someone once accused me of being an elitist when i said i didn't want to read it cause it was written for children and kids' books tend not to have much character development. but i stand by that. and while harry potter might be different (each one is like 500 pages long after all), i'm not interested in fantasy. i stopped reading that genre in junior high. ...and no, i'm not saying that fantasy is only for kids and i'm too mature for it now. but for me, fantasy was a phase, and i have since moved on. but i also don't read horror anymore. in high school i pretty much completed stephen king's line of books and since then i've no interest in him or the genre.

anyway, i wonder what genre i'll move onto next? this year, thanks to a friend, i started reading straight history (robert k. massie books about the russian rulers) but i don't think that's for me. too many names and places and times to get mixed up. i also read a couple food memoirs this year which i am still really interested in. i've been wanting to read michael pollan but i haven't been able to find any of his books used and for really cheap. ...but that's a post for a different time.

october 2011

richard dawkins - the selfish gene [27-]
short shorts: an anthology of the shortest stories [28-6]
christopher cokinos - hope is the thing with feathers [7-18]
the best american science writing 2003 [19-29]
the adventures of theodore roosevelt [31-]

adjustment bureau [12-13], the thing [15], igmar bergman - wild strawberries (1957) [22], woody allen - whatever works (2009) [22], last chance harvey (2008) [23], incendies [28]