Until last week, I had been with the Art of Manliness for nine years. For about half that time, I’ve been receiving handfuls of books, on a weekly basis, from publishers looking to get authors onto the AoM podcast. I get at least a few per week, sometimes double or triple that. So for the better part of a decade my reading tastes were largely defined by two things:
Hey, Jeremy. . .First. . .thank you for your service to AOM. . .I know what you mean about being "forced" into books. For six years, I served on the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award committee at Cleveland Public Library. All we read was literary fiction. I had no time for non-fiction at all. We had "agreed upon" books that we all read and then we'd bring a couple of books we read for further suggestions as new "agreed upon" books. Many of the books I ended up reading required a full bottle of whiskey and a loaded gun next to me. . . such is literary fiction at times. It's mainly when I stopped reading reviews. Now, free from that, I pretty much divide equally between fiction and non-fiction--history, politics, biography. Despite multiple friends raving about Harry Potter, all adults, I have not dived in yet. It is a series I am promising myself to read next year after I finish the Caro LBJ books. My goal this year is around sixty-six books or 20,000 pages, whichever comes first. I have also found myself this year "giving up on books." Not too many, but my life is too short to not look forward to opening up a book when I'm on page 97.
Hey, Jeremy. . .First. . .thank you for your service to AOM. . .I know what you mean about being "forced" into books. For six years, I served on the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award committee at Cleveland Public Library. All we read was literary fiction. I had no time for non-fiction at all. We had "agreed upon" books that we all read and then we'd bring a couple of books we read for further suggestions as new "agreed upon" books. Many of the books I ended up reading required a full bottle of whiskey and a loaded gun next to me. . . such is literary fiction at times. It's mainly when I stopped reading reviews. Now, free from that, I pretty much divide equally between fiction and non-fiction--history, politics, biography. Despite multiple friends raving about Harry Potter, all adults, I have not dived in yet. It is a series I am promising myself to read next year after I finish the Caro LBJ books. My goal this year is around sixty-six books or 20,000 pages, whichever comes first. I have also found myself this year "giving up on books." Not too many, but my life is too short to not look forward to opening up a book when I'm on page 97.