There are some books which are very much a product of their time. The Alchemist is one, as is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and the scribblings of people like Richard Brautigan. If you read them in your late teens/early twenties when they first came out, they were so much part of the zeitgeist that you were swept along and thought they were wonderful. Where you reread them decades later, you realise how badly written and shallow they are, but they still have memories of a special time in your life attached.

I have an entire shelf of religious books from a variety of religions. I have read every one cover to cover. It’s why I ended up an atheist 😆

People keep giving me literary fiction which always feels like a none too subtle dig at my taste in books. I love genre fiction such as crime, SF, and fantasy.

I’d forgotten that book existed! I read it when I was far too young from my mother’s bookshelf, but I do recall enjoying it and learning a lot 😁

Life is far too short to waste on bad books. It took me a long time to come to that view - for years I never DNFed - but now I cannot be bothered with something that I am not enjoying, or that is too much like hard work. I read for pleasure. If I am not getting pleasure why waste my time?

Part of the joy of crime fiction for me is trying to solve the crime. It would ruin it if I already knew whodunnit. If an author plays fair, it’s extremely rare for me not to solve it long before the characters, but when I do occasionally miss the truth, it makes me really happy to have been tricked. I then enjoy thinking back on the clues and seeing what I missed that I should have picked up on.

There days I only buy books that I know I will want to reread. I mainly borrow things from the library. Too many new books/authors; too few years ahead.