scijessreads

I am a sucker for a picture with arrows and words. I do love this style of Instagram post. It is a great way to summarize tropes/key points of books and things you love, while also having pretty pictures. So, I made on with a little summary of what I am like as reader. What I love right now in the books that I open up.

It’s been interesting to think back over my life as a reader. When I was younger, it was Nancy Drew, The Babysitter’s Club, The Boxcar Children, Sweet Valley High, and RL Stine’s Goosebumps series. As I grew up, I fell into mysteries from Agatha Christie and Lillian Jackson Braun (LOVED the Cat Who… series). And then I found Elizabeth Peters and the Amelia Peabody mysteries that also were about Egypt (like many a young adult, i had a fascination with Egypt and mummies). Maybe it was the similarity to Indiana Jones with the archaeology, but these books had a female archaeologist leasing the way and solving the problems. For a young woman, those books were everything.

Coming off the Amelia Peabody era, I fell into Clive Cussler books and similar stories of adventure courtesy of my dad. He was never a huge reader, but he did read these books, and it was something we could share. I also got into my medical thriller era with Robin Cook, Michael Crichton, and Patricia Cornwell.

Somewhere along the line, I started getting into fantasy and science fiction, Probably because those were the types of movies and TV shows I liked to watch (Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, the original 80’s version of Dune and the book). And scattered in there were Harlequin romance books I snuck from my mom’s stash. Johanna Lindsey may have been my first foray into romance novels.

Now, my tastes are still the same, although fantasy has a definite edge at the moment. Although contemporary romance is not far behind. But I still read as wide as I can, chasing story over genre. I’ve come to love a good slow-burn romance, and found a definite love of the darker sides of the genres. I do love a good villain. The one who hates everyone but the one person they begrudgingly manage to love (even if they would never day the words first). Let’s just say that there are things I love reading in books that I would never go for in real life. But that’s half the fun…