[issybird]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

It's the pandemic. Totally changed how and what I read.

In March, I read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas -- including all those endless lists of observed species swimming past the porthole, and when done, read it again cover to cover.

Then I could only read short stories (thank you pulpmeister for the Past Master series)

Then it was the old familiar favorites - Wells, more Verne, Conan Doyle, Stevenson, etc.

Now I'm plowing through the complete works of H.P. Lovecraft ...

Hardy is next on my list, with George Eliot.

I'm unable to read anything contemporary ...

I hear you on nothing contemporary. The Victorians were made for a pandemic. In the past few years I’ve worked my way through Trollope’s two great series, recently finishing up with The Last Chronicle of Barset and I’m bereft. Hence Hardy. But what I really want to do is start all over again with the Parliamentary novels. While I like Trollope’s stand-alones, they just don’t have the richness of the two worlds of Parliament and Barsetshire. And in addition, I have to confess to recent rereads of both Pride and Prejudice and Emma and I thought those were two books I’d never look at again, as I’ve pretty much got them memorized.

And George Eliot is also on my “time to go back to her” list. Middlemarch of course and my other favorite, the under-appreciated (IMO) Daniel Deronda.

Originally Posted by CRussel

I personally don't understand! The pandemic has not made me even a _little_ more inclined to read anything dark. In fact, the opposite. I find myself doing marathon re-reads of old favourites and series. For example, I'm now working my way back through the Honor Harrington books. Mostly as audio, but sometimes switching over to my Kindle. But I also started a new series, The Murderbot Diaries, by Martha Wells. I'm not sure quite why they're working for me, but they are. However, they're seriously overpriced at Amazon (>$10 for a novella of 150 pages???), so I'm having to be patient at the Library.

One of the pandemic effects for me is that having mostly given up on mystery novels, I’ve been dipping back into some of my favorite Golden Age (and somewhat later) authors. A particular favorite has been the Judge Dee books by Robert van Gulik.

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

I'm the same. A side-by-side comparison of my all-time stats versus 2020 stats at The StoryGraph shows a clear preference this year for shorter and faster-paced, and for fiction over nonfiction

Another change I noted this year was that while my fiction to nonfiction ratio seemed about the same, I read a lot more memoirs than heavy history this past year. I think about my reading plan for 2021 and I’d like to have one history topic, but I can’t settle. It makes me tired just to think about it, but I know I’ll miss it if I don’t.