Quote:
Originally Posted by KevinBurke
Not, really , the only series , I finished , were the three freakonomics themed books.
I read alot of math books, currently, if that counts.
Seriously, I avoid fiction, not because I have aspergers, but because it is the easiest kind of book to read, generally, so it tends to ingrain lower level reading bad habits and I don't gain as much knowledge and understanding.
I only read non-fiction and if I want to be entertained I will go to a Broadway play or watch a movie.
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Most of my reading history belongs to before ebooks, but it had a lot to do with age, experience and money.
I began mostly with libraries, and I did a certain amount of binge-reading then. I remember that when I was 15 I read my way through the complete works (a hell of a lot) of George Bernard Shaw. I also read round books that were set at school. For example, we were set one book from Spenser's Faerie Queen, so I read the rest, We were set the Prologue from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, so I read the rest, and so on. My Oxford college had a marvellous library that contained a lot of out-of-print 18th-century books, and so I read my way through them (nothing to do with my subject, which was maths).
I started buying books seriously when I was 16 and a very hard-up student. So I haunted second-hand bookshops, where one could pick up lots of Victorian books for next to nothing. I also bought paperbacks, mainly classics that I thought ought to form part of my general education. I didn't but any genre books for many years. In my late 20s I started to buy non-fiction, mainly history (which I felt very ignorant about) and then lots of sciency books. I started to buy some literary fiction but OTW just wasn't attracted by most modern fiction.
I finally arrived at a point where I felt I had read most of the English-language classics. I got rather frustrated at not being able to read ancient Greek and Latin classics in the original languages but did read a lot in translation. I made an effort to read French classics in the original language, though my reading speed in French is quite a bit slower than in English.
Only in my 50s did I start reading some genre fiction. I have never given up on non-fiction, but have broadened my interests to include philosophy and politics.
I got rid of my dead-tree book collection (about 5000 volumes) once I got really committed to ebooks. I now alternate between what I think of as serious reading (mainly non-fiction) and entertainment, which includes some genre fiction (detective stories). So if I look back over the years, it is obvious that my reading habits and motivation have changed a great deal. I suggest that for most people this may be so and wherever you are now may not sum up where you will end up.