BooksBooks
I learned to read when I was three and haven't had my nose out of a book since. As a kid, I was always the one reading in the corner, or in the middle of the hallway walking to class, or under the cover of a textbook in class. I went over to my friends' houses to read their books. I worked in bookstores for nine years when I was a student, and I work for a publisher now.
It's pretty obvious that my sense of self is tied up in print; I get cranky if I don't get enough of my fix. My friends and family use my reading patterns as a diagnostic tool--if I'm not reading, then something is wrong. "It's who you are," someone told me recently, and I can't really argue.
I have few natural predjudices towards reading material. My bookshelves (sorted alphabetically by author, and divided out by subject) carry science fiction and fantasy, mysteries, graphic novels, travel literature, history, sociology, languages, music history and criticism, literary criticism, modern fiction, medieval fiction, and even the occasional romance novel. And that's not all of it.
It's not even all in English. Now that I'm learning to read Japanese, John and I are happily building a manga collection. My French is rusty, but I fully intend someday to be able to read The Three Musketeers, Cyrano de Bergerac, and the lovely French edition of Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire that I inherited from Margret Tolnai.
My taste is costantly evolving, and I am always finding something new to be interested in. Sometimes it's contemporary religion; sometimes it's William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelite movement; sometimes it's as simple as a new mystery author. While I can't say that I've read any westerns, and my mathematical knowledge is pretty limited, there is nothing to say that tomorrow I might change my mind and decide that I can't face the world until I know more about algebra.
Below are links to reviews of books that I have been reading recently, books that I've acquired, and books that I want to read (subdivided into purchased and unpurchased).