For someone who espouses reading as much as I, and who is gradually building a formidable personal library, my reading habits are not what many people would imagine. I’m a remarkably slow reader. I never read more than one book at once, committed to a feast-and-famine style: I will fly through one book in under a week yet take three or four months to trudge through another. (That’s not to say the subject matter isn’t appealing; sometimes it just leaves me in a frame of mind where five or six pages will suffice for days.) I have stacks of magazines backlogged, and the Sunday paper is hardly cracked open before the next one makes it to the doorstep. I read to absorb knowledge, savoring the flow of words gradually and with great relish, and that can take some time.
Thus, my reading list is relatively short. Included here are the book the currently holds my fancy, some of my recent paramours—and by recent, I mean probably within the last year—and a few all-time favorites.
Currently reading
The Return of John Macnab
Andrew Greig
Recently read
- The Quick
Lauren Owen - Stoner
John Williams - Joss Whedon: The Biography
Amy Pascale - Ragnarok
A.S. Byatt - Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting
Kitty Burns Florey - The Rise and Fall of Great Powers
Tom Rachman - Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case
Agatha Christie
Favorite fiction
Note that this is a very hard list to curate, as I dearly love so many novels. This best encompasses those books I’d read many times over, and would pop immediately to mind when asked the loaded question, “What’s your favorite book.”
- The Song of Roland
Anon. - Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen - The Mists of Avalon
Marion Zimmer Bradley - Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë - Possession
A.S. Byatt - And Then There Were None
Agatha Christie - Good Omens
Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett - Electric Brae
Andrew Greig
Favorite non-fiction
These, too, can run quite a gamut. My greatest loves are for ancient and medieval histories, as well as books about language and, well, books themselves. Of course, there are also biographies and memoirs galore. These selections have stayed with me, whether read decades ago or last year, and still produce great food for thought.
- Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
Dee Brown - Used and Rare: Travels in the Book World
Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone - Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness
Lyanda Lynn Haupt - Eleanor of Aquitaine
Alison Weir - The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary
Simon Winchester
Harpie's Nest 