My Reading Habits

The bulk of my reading growing up was in fantasy. The first series I read was David Eddings' "The Belgariad," followed by "The Mallorean" and his other series. Those, of course, led to reading Tolkien, McCaffrey, Lackey, Weis & Hickman, Lewis, and others. My senior thesis was on fantasy literature in the 20th century and I've continued my life-long love of fantasy.

I've also been a fan of science fiction, though not as much as fantasy as I find they can oftentimes get bogged down in the technological descriptions of things rather than the story. Eddings once said sci-fi tells you the kind of watch, how it was made, where it was made, who made it, and how to fix it; fantasy tells you the time and moves on with the story. I am a firm proponent of keeping fantasy and sci-fi separated in libraries and bookstores.

I worked for a long time for companies that recorded audio books for the blind and physically handicapped and was exposed to every kind of book you can imagine. Many genres for me have been not so much ruined but lessened for the constant exposure. Because of that, I tend to gravitate more recently to non-fiction. The last few non-fiction (non-MLIS) books I've read have been autobiographies, political tomes, memoirs, and histories.

I'm also a Shakespeare buff and am currently reading my way through the complete works; I'm in "2 Henry IV," right now. A lot of my non-fiction reading centers around Shakespeare history and criticism. I found a wonderful fiction book last year, though, titled "If We Were Villains," by M. L. Rio, through my Shakespearean obsession. Ian Doescher's Shakespearean Star Wars saga is a true delight.

I'm not a big fan of horror, so that's probably one I'll choose to annotate in this class to get more experience with it.

Favorite authors include:

• Shakespeare
• Eddings (of course)
• Anne Rice
• Mario Puzo
• Dashiell Hammett
• C.S. Lewis
• Tolkien
  
  and I'm probably forgetting a host of others.