My Personal Reading Profile

Let me tell you the tale of a 30-something mom of 3. She started as a newspaper reporter and now has worked for almost a decade in a library. All her friends are librarians, and she commutes to work an hour each day while attending graduate school full time online at night.

That is me, and honestly, I do most of my reading lately in my car. I listen to audiobooks on my commute to work with the Libby and OverDrive apps. While we are being honest, “most of my reading” lately includes library science studies, industry journals, and lessons on Canvas. I still have my guilty pleasures though.

Guilty Pleasures

I am so sorry to inform you that my average reading interests make most of my library friends’ noses wrinkle and their lips curl in disapproval. My favorite books to read include problematic romances. If it includes a grandiose love declaration, a man who is secretive or has trouble understanding his own feelings, and a tired, awful unexpected pregnancy trope, I probably like it.

Two books I’ve read recently were Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult and Verity by Colleen Hoover. Wish You Were Here was the first book I had ever read that included the COVID-19 pandemic in the plot. It was almost cathartic to look at the pandemic from other people’s perspectives, because it was a scary time with a lot of fear of the unknown for me too. Though I like these books, I would not defend the infidelity in either of them, even if one was imagined. (Spoiler alert.)

Two of my favorite series are the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer and the 50 Shades of Gray series by E. L. James. I have read them a few times, and I have heard all of the criticisms about them being poorly written. I still enjoy them. That is why I like to think of it as a guilty pleasure.

Inspirational Role Models

When I'm not reading romance novels, I am reading middle grade books with my 11-year-old daughter. We appreciate stories featuring strong female protagonists. Recently, we have enjoyed titles like Tiger Daughter by Rebecca Lim, The Van Gogh Deception by Devron Hicks, Spin with Me by Ami Polonsky, and Show Me a Sign by Ann Clare LeZotte. These narratives resonate with me, because they include diverse backgrounds, fostering empathy among readers in the middle grades and, hopefully, my daughter.

Adolescent Literature

A librarian friend of mine suggested that if I liked the Twilight series, I probably would like other YA novels. Some YA books that I have read for myself lately and liked were Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez, You Should See me in a Crown by Leah Taylor, and Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor. I read Out of Darkness after I listened to an interview with the author on NPR about how they were banning it in schools. It is true what they say. When you ban a book, you just give it more attention.

I ended up liking Laini Taylor’s Smoke and Bone series so much, that I read the other books in the series as well. If you care to check them out, they are called Days of Blood and Starlight and Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor. I think it would make a good movie trilogy, but it would be expensive to do costuming for all of the chimaera.

I have two gripes about books featuring teen characters. The first is that authors often make teen characters unrealistically knowledgeable and worldly. The second is that the stories are sewn up so perfectly at the end. In my experience with conflict and tragedy, nobody turns around after a life of discriminating against people and says, “I guess you’re right. I should let my daughter have the same choices for education as I would if she was a son.”   

Outside My Comfort Zone

I am not totally opposed to science fiction. I enjoyed Binti by Nnedi Okorafor. I also enjoy fiction that is rooted in Greek mythology. I started reading Circe by Madeline Miller with my daughter, but I ended up finishing it separately. It was a bit too mature for her.

I rarely finish a book I do not like, but Florida by Lauren Groff was an exception. I read it for a book club. It was just too raw for me. I do not enjoy reading about starving kids and dysfunctional families where the kids get hurt in such detail.

Overall, I think it is good to try reading outside my comfort zone, and I have plenty of librarians around me to compare notes with. Wyatt (2019) said "Talk with readers, with fellow staff members, with colleagues about what they’re reading; check reserve queues to identify hot new authors and titles; keep track of genres and the most popular authors within them and read or familiarize yourself with them" (p. 5). 

The Classics

Going back a little bit farther, I really liked reading Dante’s Inferno by Dante Alighieri and The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck in college. As the years have passed, I have thought the most about these books. Movie depictions of the biblical afterlife often make more sense after having read about the circles of hell in Dante’s Inferno.  

Of all the books I have ever read, I think the most about The Good Earth. When my grandmother died and left her land to me, my sister, and a cousin, I thought a lot about how Wang Lung, the main character in The Good Earth, tried to leave his farmland to his sons. I thought about how they could not really conceive of what that land meant to him and how they made their plans to sell it.

References 

Wyatt, N. (2019). Listening to advisors : A conversation about readers’ advisory services, practice, and practicing. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 59(1), 2–6.