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First, an OFFICIAL-TYPE ANNOUNCEMENT for

genarti reminds me that we are halfway through the writing period, and probably should make mention of this! And thefore I would like to take a moment to remind people that there are two weeks left to finish (or start) your brilliant assignments and send them in to us. A few people have already sent stuff in; Gen and I are united in thinking that these people are AWESOME and also being a little bit terrified of them. (But, you say, as mods, surely you guys should already have your fics done and betaed well in advance and be prepared to dive into the process of being responsible and organizational! I think we would also be united in responding to you with hollow laughter.)

Something in which Gen and I are not united: our reading habits. Every few months Gen and I have the same discussion, and it goes something like this:

BECCA: Well, I will read this book that you recommend to me next time I have a slot for it in my reading quota system, which should be . . . hmmm, approximately four book from now.
GEN: I find your reading quota system strange and lolarious.
BECCA: See, if I did not mentally schedule my reading, I would pretty much just always read YA fantasy and never read nonfiction at all. And I want to read nonfiction, because learning things is useful and interesting, but it has less immediate appeal to me when I am grabbing the first book to catch my eye.
GEN: I do not understand this problem of yours. Nonfiction catches my eye all the time, it is enormously appealing! It is much more guaranteed to be interesting than fiction.
BECCA: But . . . plot! And characters! Make things much easier to read! Boring nonfiction is a lot harder to get through than boring fiction.
GEN: But if a novel is boring or frustrating, then it's just pointless and I don't care. At least in nonfiction you are guaranteed to learn some facts!
BECCA: BUT WHAT IF THEY'RE BORING FACTS, GEN. WHAT THEN.

Despite giving myself the last word in this fictionalized version of our debate, I think Gen probably has the moral high ground in this argument. But I stand by my position all the same.

As a partial result of these differing literary worldviews, pretty much every time Gen and I see each other, I foist some fantasy off on her and she foists some nonfiction off on me. The most recent trade ended up in me reading Women in the Middle Ages: The Lives of Real Women in a Vibrant Age of Transition. Fortunately this is not the kind of nonfiction book that is full of boring facts! The first half is pretty 101 on The Middle Ages, These Were Women's Roles, They Were More Interesting Than you Might Think; the second half is more specific, and traces the documented lives of some actual ladies, ranging from politically powerful noblewomen to guildswomen suing their employers to upwardly mobile merchant's wives defending their lands from siege by their neighbors. I wouldn't recommend it to the medievalists on here, but for someone who doesn't know that much about the era - or would just like a better idea of some of the scope available for a lady at that time period - it's pretty interesting. I don't really have that much more to say about it, though, so, instead: a poll!

[Poll #1622741]

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Ha, seriously? I AM GLAD IT IS OF ENABLING USE TO SOMEONE ELSE TOO, THEN.

I am also cracking up at how completely predictable we both are, but that's a fairly frequent occurrence.

That's why I called mythology cheating. You do find it in the nonfiction section of libraries, but it's really fiction, in the long run.

I've read it, actually, and it's not half-bad! A pretty fun book with some really excellent research behind it. Although the ending did seem overly dramatic and a teensy bit out of fucking NOWHERE. Of especially awesome note was John being all, "I'd like you not to do this, but I know better than to tell you not to, sooo... don't get killed kthx."

Hahaha, good to know! It's been on my list for a while, so it is glad to have the excellently-researched aspect corroborated.

No less awesome for that, though. >.>

Well, my other confession is that sometimes I skim to see which of mine made it on there. *laughing*

Just be careful. At some point the letters just peter out into the dullness of Heloise asking for advice on how to manage her convent. Which is dull. So dull.

I have high tolerance for medieval dullness! . . . okay, I realize that goes against much of the actual content of my post above. But I have taken enough medievalism classes/read enough historical fiction novels that I am generally like 'oh, okay, this ties in to that and that' and can retain relative interest levels.

I am about equally likely to impulse buy fiction and non-fiction, but usually when it comes down to time to sit and read, I am more likely to gravitate to fiction, especially whatever is the fluffiest fiction I have around. I am a bad lit snob, sometimes.

There are definitely times when I really just need to grab the fluffiest thing possible off the shelf. (This is the other reason I don't count comics/manga in my reading quotas - I can always cheat a little by sneaking them in when I need something lighter.)

I almost never pick up prose fiction. I do buy the hell out of comics and manga, though. But in terms of not-comics, I am attracted to nonfiction much, much more than I am to fiction.

(I think I just have a bad habit of going, "OH GOD I DON'T CARE GET ON WITH IT!" with a lot of prose description, since much of the prose I like to read is heavy on dialog and action and light on saying what things/people look like.)

(NB: I would often keep school textbooks to read afterward. I am nerdy as shit.)

I tend to have a much harder time actually buying comics and manga, just it's so relatively expensive and I go through it so fast. And also I have a completionism thing, so if I have one volume I have to buy ALL THE VOLUMES, and if I know I can't afford to buy ALL THE VOLUMES I don't want to buy any volumes! So if I can't get it from the library or borrow it from someone, I do a lot of staring wistfully at bookstore shelves and moving on.

(Hee, I was trained up on Dickens and Hugo from a young age, so I've got an awesomely high tolerance for wordy description. It's not forty pages on the Parisian sewer system? OKAY, I'M GOOD.)

(I have totally done this. >.>)

I think I count manga and anime and even light novels separately because to me they're a separate medium, or at least seem to be one in Japan. The Japanese media statistics site Oricon, for instance, keeps bestseller lists for manga and light novels separate from other fiction. It leads to some peculiar mental divides, though -- the Toshokan Sensou light novels aren't 'fiction' to me, but my Japanese-language copy of Wagahai wa Neko de Aru is.

I have stalled out on my reading list at the moment for the stupid reason that most of my yet-to-be-read books are rather difficult to take on public transport. I may have to rectify this when I'm travelling this weekend.

You know, I've been wondering recently - I don't know exactly where the line falls between 'light novels' and 'novels' in Japanese lit. Most of what I've read has been light novels, with I think the sole exception of some of Haruki Murakami's stuff, but some of the light novels are reasonably dense and lengthy (a few of the Twelve Kingdoms books spring to mind.) So where does the dividing line fall? I tend to automatically count light novels as the same as novels, because they're mostly-text, but I'm still not really sure.

Hah, the issue of problematically heavy books is why my purse is currently falling apart. *sheepish*

I suggest Rhys Bowen for fluffy detective novels. I read Her Royal Spyness first.

The nonfiction generally happens because I want to write about fiction about it -- does that count for anything?

Also, have you ever read anything by Dava Sobel? I just started Galileo's Daughter, and one of its big selling points is how "fiction-like" it is, i.e., it relies heavily on letters and the relationship between Galileo and his awesome nun daughter.

Also also, Studs Terkel. &oralhistories; FOREVER.

I am much like you in that unless I specifically schedule myself to read non-fiction, I probs will just sit around reading YA fantasy and whatnot forever.

And I like non-fiction when I actually make myself read it because I love learning about interesting things! It's just that my immediate impulse is not in that direction. Also, like many, growing up there was a somewhat negative association with non-fiction since it was usually compulsory for school. Of course, I rarely minded ANY reading for school, non-fiction or otherwise, once I actually started reading it, but before I started the fact of being TOLD what to read would just irritate me.

Of course, I also constantly read books in my lap during class, so hahaha my biases are clear.

Mainly fiction, but I do read non-fiction too - about history and languages (and occasionally something about science, like astronomy, or physics.).

Ahhh. My Mom reads them sometimes. I have a tendency to read mysteries with dogs in them.

I really don't care how it's written (well, if there are some good photographs, that is!).

It is all fiction, all the time round these parts! And about 80% of it is YA. The rest is fantasy or scifi! =D I think the last non-school literary thing I read was The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Which I specifically picked up because I heard it was awesome about comics. I need a little genre in all my stories. =)

Plus, I just do not have the attention span for nonfiction. Occasionally I will pick up something that looks interesting and read it for a day and then never get around to finishing it. This is why I've had a book on the history of the hiphop movement checked out from the library for months now. I'm sure someday I'll finish it!

That totally counts! And often tends to be a way that I find interesting nonfiction subjects as well. Research is totally a good way to get into this stuff.

I never have, but I've heard of Galileo's Daughter - I will definitely add it to the list! Where Studs Terkel has been FOR AGES without me actually getting around to it. Which is a thing I should remedy.

I want to be Studs when I grow up. READ STUDS. "The Good War" ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod.

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