Tag Archives: Reading

Fancy That! I Married a Non-Reader

I don’t know how it happened, but I married a non-reader. This was years ago but at the time, it didn’t occur to me that he was a non-reader. I sometimes wonder how it could have slipped by me because reading has been a part of my life since I was a small child. How in the world could I have married a man who HATES to read? I know that hate is a strong word, but that is the word he uses to describe the act.

For years, I’ve pushed books his way. He loves history and documentaries that have anything to do with sunken ships and the ocean in general. With this in mind, I’ve put books into his hands that might fit the bill, but as soon as he sees a book his eyes glaze over. Don’t get me wrong, he tries, but once he sets the book down, it stays down. I’ve pretty much given up.

I suppose it’s good that one of us is a non-reader, in that, when I get into a reading jag (and that is what I call it), someone has to feed the kids, get them dressed, etc. So perhaps there is balance there, yet it’s just not readily visible. It does peeve me sometimes when he gives me “the eye” over reading “too much.” To him, it’s too much. To me, it’s never enough.

I suspect this is one of the main reasons I started this blog. When you read a particularly good book, you want to talk about it, share it with the world, etc. Here, I know that I am in the company of others like me. No one gives me the eye for gushing about a book. No one questions the time I spend reading. You all get me, and I in turn, get you.

It’s a beautiful thing.

I do wish sometimes I could find that one book to turn him around but I’ve accepted that it’s just not his thing. Apparently, it’s not my son’s thing either ( I haven’t given up on him though), but my daughter makes up for it. Thank goodness she is a reader or I’d be completely out-numbered.

Do you live in a household like this?

Fancy That! Genres Through the Ages

This is my first, official Fancy That! post.

Anyway, I was thinking about the types of books that I used to read when I was younger. When I was in junior high/high school, I read a lot of thrillers. Stephen King was, well…KING. I stayed up all night reading his books. When I ran out of King books, I turned to Dean Koontz. Someone asked me to read Watchers and I loved it. I think I went out and got all of his books after reading that one.

Sometime after that, I turned to historical romance. Yes! Me! Real bodice rippers too. I loved Johanna Lindsey. A friend of mine was a bit older than me and one summer she found herself hooked on them. She’d give me her copies but I also got quite a few of them from the library. I didn’t need sex education in school because these books told me all I needed to know and tossed in some historical stuff as well. Can teens check these types of books out from the library now? They have ratings for movies but not for books. Just wondering. I mean, would a librarian stop a young girl from checking out a book that might be too mature for her?

In college, I was exposed to a lot of different genres. Much of it was required reading but I didn’t care. I loved all of it. At that time, I fell in love with the classics but the genre that I really favored, was dystopian fiction and to this day, this is the genre that I really covet yet I have the hardest time admitting. Why do I have a hard time admitting it? Well, because for many, dystopian = fail. Meaning, that society has crumbled or fallen in upon itself and lots of people see that as depressing. I don’t see it that way at all though.

For me, I love to pick it apart. To see where society failed or better yet, to try to predict when it will fail. Orwell’s 1984 still resonates with readers today because the concept of Big Brother is more relevant now than it was when the book was first written (1949). BUT, when I read it back in college I could see all of that happening. It didn’t seem so far off to me and that’s how it is when I read dystopian fiction today. Volcanoes erupting, pandemics making themselves known, earthquakes…so many earthquakes. I’ve read all this in books, but have you taken a look around lately?

So my question to you is this, do you still love the genres of your youth? I can’t say that I love thrillers anymore even though I do read them every now and then and historical romance hasn’t had my attention since I put it down in the mid-eighties. I guess you could say that I outgrew those genres. What about you? Is there a genre that you used to love that you cannot read now?