Red Faced And Starring At My Shoes

Well, I am not actually wearing shoes, so it's more like I am starring at my bare feet, but you get the picture. What I am about to admit to is embarrassing.

I am ashamed of my book choices. There, it's out. I have been discreetly buying and reading books that I consider a lower species of writing for awhile.

Has it been days?

Has it been weeks?

Nope, it has been years. I have been doing this for years. 

A little background: I read sci-fi, fantasy, young adult and kids books openly and happily. Never feeling silly or embarrassed about them even if they are crap. I often openly admit that they are crap with a smile on my face. 

I have a C.S.Lewis quote TATTOOED on my foot. Not a quote of something he said, nor even from one of his college required reading books like Mere Christianity or Screwtape letters. My quote is from The Magicians Nephew. A children's book. So you see, There is a lot about my reading choices that another starting-to-get-grey-hairs and well-out-of her-twenties women might feel timid about.

None of that causes me to blush at all. It is actually my more mainstream choices that I continuously avoid admitting to.

It's the 'mainstream' and 'normal' books I intermittently pick up that give me pause to admit to. Wild, Those Who Save Us, and The Witch's Daughter to name a few. My current one is The Spymistress by Jennifer Chiaverini. I like it. It is easy to read, but still interesting and the characters are likable and intelligent. It would be better with aliens, space travel, dragons, faeries, werewolves and/or vampires... but hey, no book is perfect. 

Also, and even more distressing is my occasional desire for books that are NOT smut... but definitely could be classified as paranormal romance. Ew. Even typing it makes me feel dirty. Seriously though, lots of chicks read this kind of mind numbing trash. These ones I am reading are nothing compared to the ones we cleaned out of my grandmothers room a decade ago when she moved into a nursing home. (hmm... maybe I can blame this on genetics...)

So why do I skate around talking about these books? I am pretty active in a facebook page overflowing with people who are addicted to reading like I am. Any book published, at least one person in that group has read, but I avoid the 'what are you reading?' posts with a vengeance when I have a questionable book in progress. I will never meet these people and if I did we would never recognize each other for two of the three or four thousand people in the group. Seems silly, but it continues.

Am I just a book snob who is slumming and will eventually come to her senses and give Anne McCaffrey's ambitious son and J.R.R.Tolkien another chance, falling back into my comfort zone? By all that is good in this world I hope so! 

Or maybe I will stop all my close-minded snobbishness and take my changing reading habits in stride, like a mature adult should. 

Ha! I wouldn't hold your breath for that one!

Whatever happens, I am glad for the chance to understand the interests of other readers. I am appreciative that I am getting into the minds of characters the like of which I may never have encountered in my other genres. I am grateful for goodreads.com so that I can discreetly find other books like the ones I can't ask my physical or virtual friends about.

George R R Martin wrote "A reader lives thousand lives before he dies... The man who never reads lives only one." I will live a wide variety, it seems. I am thankful for the opportunity... perplexing as it may be.