Reading Cycles

Have you ever been through reading cycles? Bibliophile though I am, it seems my reading life is one cycle after another. Right now I’m on my non-fiction cycle and reading fiction can be a chore.

I grew up in a Reader’s Haven, although some might have called it a Reader’s Hovel out of exasperation at trying to climb over the stacks of books. My father introduced all of his children to reading and liked to brag of when he was a child and was the only kid in the neighborhood allowed to borrow double the allotment of books allowed by his local library because the librarians knew he’d have them all finished within the two-week loan period.

Similarly, I was also a voracious reader as a kid. When I was in sixth grade I broke the five thousand page record for pages read in a grading period simply because the teacher said it had never been done. (In retrospect, I think he simply said that to encourage kids like me to try to break that limit.) Give me a four-hundred-page book and I could have it finished in two days.

I can still wolf down books, but only if the ones I’m reading fit the cycle through which I’m currently passing. For example, for years I was a romance novel fan. Still love romance novels — they’re a sentimental favorite — but it is now a chore rather than a pleasure to plow through them. When I read fiction these days, I usually do best with the cozy mysteries — especially the foodie mysteries that have recipes printed in the book. I may never try out those recipes, but I love reading through them and imagining how the food would turn out. (Likely better for my waistline anyway!)

But give me a non-fiction book on a subject that interests me — currently, Pope Benedict XVI, marriage, and parenting issues, and please don’t analyze that too deeply! — and once again I have to carefully pace my reading so I’ll have enough book left to read to get me to the next payday. Does anyone else have experience with reading cycles? If so, through what cycles of the Reader’s Haven have you passed?

15 thoughts on “Reading Cycles”

  1. Sort of, but overall I have a strong tendency to choose non-fiction. I tend to want to carry a truth away with me after reading something, than I tend to want pure entertainment of my imagination. If I were reading a completely made-up story about someone going through a particular crisis, I just can’t bring myself to trust that “that’s what it might really be like”, whereas if I read a non-fiction memoir on the same material, I find it easier to connect to the messages therein.
    Some of the fiction books that I read were worth my time, just for the author’s amusing style of expression. But unfortunately I find that this kind of writing is difficult for me to find–the kind of writing where you read it and think to yourself, “What a clever way to put that. I’ll have to remember that.”
    If I’m really wanting pure feel-good entertainment, I still tend towards non-fiction in the form of humor.

  2. My reading cycles center around particular authors. I find an author who already has a substantial body of work, and then I read all of his or her books, ideally in order.
    I read all of Sue Grafton’s books (mostly in order), all of Patricia Cornwell’s books (although her latest is so poorly written that I think I’ll pass from now on), and several other writers’ bodies of work. Right now I’m enjoying Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch books, Ruth Rendell, and P.D. James. (I love mysteries.)
    I usually have several non-fiction and one or two fiction books going at one time so I have something to suit my mood.
    ‘thann

  3. My reading cycles are based around an economy of TIME. By that I mean that I am *always* up for a good read, fiction or non-fiction. (I think there can be as much Truth in a good piece of fiction as in -say a parable.) Type of books vary usually by subject or author, no pattern. I’m reading on the Civil War right now (the Shaara books, Grant Moves South, etc) but last year it was all of Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey books (I felt like a sad little boy when I finished the last, for it was done.)
    I remember some golden summers in University when I worked in fire towers up in the Northern Boreal Forests of Canada (Northern Alberta, for those of you with a map.) Becuae of the extreme isolation I would bring case upon case of books. In rainy weather I would get through two good sized novels a day.
    Now I have three kids… heh. My economy of time shifts. But one of the few things I am desperate to impart (along with my Faith and my French heritage) is my love of reading. Get those little guys goin! (I have a vague but optimistic notion that getting them reading will also stop them screaming, but who knows.)

  4. There’re always stacks of books around my place that I’ve yet to read. And I love to read but, in the last few years, I’ve just not found/made the time. For whatever reason. (But I keep buying books, of course! So I’m WAY behind.) I’m always in the middle of a book, even if I’m neglecting it, but I’ll go in these fits of reading frenzy during which I’ll polish off many books in a very short period. Sometimes the books I read are related by author, subject, etc, but usually not. Autumn is a great reading time for me. Winter, too. There always seems to be too much to do in the Spring & Summer. (Maybe it’s a baseball thing?) At any rate, I can tell I’m definitely gearing up for a very major reading fit over the next few months. So, I guess my cycles are more seasonal & mildly obsessive! (Honestly, it’s very strange ‘cos I can feel the need to read one book over another. Strange.)
    In the past, I’ve been a one-book-at-a-time kinda fella. I like/need to focus on just that one & devour as much about it as I can. But recently, I’ve had any number of books going at once. Right now, I’ve working on 3 fictions, one theology, one poetry, & a biography. It’s odd ‘cos I’ve never really done this before! I feel as if the actual reading process is being slowed down because of it. But I’m hoping this Autumn will change all that!

  5. Oh my, yes. I used to think my cycles made me a weird person or something. From about 4th through 8th grade I was in a serious science fiction cycle. Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asamov, Theodore Sturgeon, Murray Leinster, etc. Then historical fiction through high school, especially if it had medieval or religious themes like THE ROBE, IVANHOE, THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING. Now I’m in a mysteries cycle with side trips into Intelligent Design, historical and relgious nonfiction, and bubonic plague (!). My kids think I’m weird about the latter, but I can’t help it. It’s an event that absolutely transfixes me.

  6. I’m a huge book-reader. My wife is too, so you can imagine what our walls are filled with :-). At any one time, I try to have two books being read – one mind workout and one mind candy. Usually that means a non-fiction for the workout (some B16 right now), and fiction for the mind candy… but it can often work the other way around 🙂

  7. When I read fiction these days, I usually do best with the cozy mysteries — especially the foodie mysteries that have recipes printed in the book.
    E.g. Diane Mott Davidson?
    I have a strong tendency to choose non-fiction. I tend to want to carry a truth away with me after reading something
    I cannot understand this aversion to fiction, but then I don’t agree with the implication that fiction is “untrue” or fails to communicate truth. Created in the image of God, humans are artists created to express truth through their own subcreations.
    “The Manicheans separated spirit and matter. To them all material things were evil. They sought pure spirit and tried to approach the infinite directly without any mediation of matter. This is also pretty much the modern spirit, and for the sensibility infected with it, fiction is hard if not impossible to write because fiction is so very much an incarnational art.” Flannery O’Connor, “The Nature & Aim of Fiction” in Mystery & Manners
    “Christ didn’t redeem us by a direct intellectual act, but became incarnate in human form, and he speaks to us now through the mediation of a visible Church. All this may seem a long way from the subject of fiction, but it is not, for the main concern of the fiction writer is with mystery as it is incarnated in human life.” Flannery O’Connor, “Catholic Novelists” in Mystery & Manners
    “The heart of man is not compound of lies,
    but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
    and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
    man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
    Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
    and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
    his world-dominion by creative act:
    not his to worship the great Artefact,
    man, sub-creator, the refracted light
    through whom is splintered from a single White
    to many hues, and endlessly combined
    in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
    Though all the crannies of the world we filled
    with elves and goblins, though we dared to build
    gods and their houses out of dark and light,
    and sow the seeds of dragons, ’twas our right
    (used or misused). The right has not decayed.
    We make still by the law in which we’re made.”
    J.R.R. Tolkien, “Mythopoeia”
    See also “Tolkien’s Take on the Truth”
    My reading cycles center around particular authors. I find an author who already has a substantial body of work, and then I read all of his or her books, ideally in order.
    I tend to do the same when it comes to fiction.

  10. (M.A.) “When I read fiction these days, I usually do best with the cozy mysteries — especially the foodie mysteries that have recipes printed in the book.”
    (pha) “E.g. Diane Mott Davidson?”
    Yes, but I find Davidson to be hit-and-miss as to whether I enjoy her books. My favorite foodie mystery author is Joanne Fluke.

  14. Ryan, I concur!!! 🙂
    My favorite foodie mystery author is Joanne Fluke.
    On your recommendation, I’ve acquired a Fluke book and look forward to reading it. (If I can tear myself away from my new book of Su Doku puzzles.)

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