Omnivore

When it comes to reading, I'd love more focus. Because when it comes down to it I'm an incorrigible omnivore.

I'll devour a prim romance written in 1930 followed by a dry article on how industrial vinyl is made followed by a book of sonnets followed by the back of the pasta box. Something can be happily lowbrow or hoity-toity or thoroughly utilitarian or lavishly maudlin and I'll consume it in equal measure and with equal appetite.

I probably favor short stories, comedic fantasy, magic realism, graphic novels, biographies, and travel books more than anything. I like talky books, like, A LOT. I love to read plays and I enjoy young adult, very much, of course.

For my twentieth birthday I got the complete "Monty Python's Flying Circus" transcripts, two hefty tomes I ate up over the course of a single weekend. Cooking and astronomy magazines, anything satiric, absolutely anything Austen, Poe, Vonnegut, Wodehouse, Shakespeare, and Douglas Adams are main staples of my diet. There is a big dollop of Lucy Maud Montgomery atop the whole tasty goulash, too.

And anyone who has the word "humorist" in his or her bio automatically wins my heart: Dorothy Parker, James Thurber, Fran Lebowitz, and a dozen more.

I'll reread things I adore, several times. Austen is always an issue here.

Three shelf fixtures: "Persepolis" by Marjane Satrapi, "A Room with a View" by E.M. Forster, "The Secret Miracle" by Jorge Luis Borges.

I like poetry. I'm wild for haiku. I like big ideas. And I like messages written in the sky by tiny, faraway planes.

What's your reading diet?

(I just reread this and find it highly self-focused, so apologies. I love this topic, though, and realize I hadn't yet introduced it on the blog. Now please tell me your star authors.)