Reader profile

During my free time, I usually have a book in my hand.  I can not remember the last time I did not at least one book I was working my way through.  Due to the fact that I'm the youngest at the branch library I work at (by 30 years), I have become the de facto teen librarian so I've been trying to read more YA books in the past year.  I also read a good amount of middle-grade books,

What I'm currently reading

because most of the RA questions I usually get are from parents who want their young reluctant readers to grow.  (Also, it's just a good palette cleanser sometimes.)  I also read quite a bit of graphic novels.  That has nothing to do with my job, I just enjoy comics.

I like books that make me laugh.  I like books that make me think.  I love books that make me do both.  Sometimes I want to be creeped out.  Sometimes I want to learn more about something or some-when that I only know a little bit about.  I care about characters over plot.

There are, I admit, genres I tend stick to.  I read entirely too much fantasy.  I love the imagination that goes into those books, into that world-building.  I enjoy thrillers (especially psychological) for their pacing.  There's some horror that I enjoy, but I don't often read that genre because I just don't get creeped out from simply reading about creepy

My graphic novel bookcase has a blend of titles
from different genres, with different qualities that I like.

things.  (Thinking back, almost all the horror titles I do enjoy are graphic novels.)  I've also started branching out into non-fiction this past year.  I used to avoid anything non-fic like the plague, convinced it would be boring.  (Probably the after-effect of all that assigned reading in school!)  But I've begun to find quite a few interesting books on a range of topics from environmentalism, to pet culture, to food culture and of course the celebrity memoir.  As I was for some years an undergraduate history student, I enjoy both historical fiction and non-fiction.

But I can count on one hand the number of romance books I can remember reading.  While I usually enjoy romantic sub-plots in books of other genres, I just can't make it through a book devoted to that romance!  I find it's often too predictable.  And I don't think I've ever read a Western.

That's probably way too much on my general reading tastes, so here are some specific titles and authors that I like.  I took a picture of one of my bookshelves, to prove that I love Good Omens by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett so much that I own both of the matching covers.  (I also own two copies of Dracula, not pictured.)  The Song of Ice and Fire series is just visible down there at the bottom, which is the only series capable of making me even consider that maybe, just maybe, Harry Potter isn't my favorite?  And to the top, you'll see Red Rising by Pierce Brown.  I absolutely can not wait on the last in that trilogy, Morning Star, to release in three weeks!