Much to my amazement, I now regularly read non-fiction. (I blame Barbara Tuchman.) After decades of struggling to finish fat, detailed non-fictional works, I find, at my nightly reading, I’m drawn towards such works. I’m on my third in six months and my TBR list of such tomes grows daily.
I also find I’m reading less romance–where I used to read two or three a week, I’m now reading two or four a month. I still enjoy, mostly, the genre, but it just doesn’t call to me in the way it once did. I find I’d rather read a good mystery or historical fiction.
And, for the first time in almost two decades, I’ve been picking up some actual books. Not many, true–mostly I still read on my iPad. But, each day, I read a chapter or two from books we’ve collected over the years. I’m currently really enjoying Marc Meyers’ Anatomy of a Song which is perfect to read peripatetically.
I’m not sure why my reading patterns have changed but I’m enjoying this new reading me.
Have your reading habits changed in the past decade? Do you gravitate to different genres or different ways of reading? What prompted the change?
I enjoy more nonfiction that I did in the past. I have to say, though, that the most tragic change in my reading habits is that I read so much less! I used to devour books, and now I struggle to find time to read at all. I like to listen to audiobooks, but they are always so long. It’s not that I don’t enjoy reading when I do it, it’s just that it always seems to take a backseat to the other things I want to do.
same, I’ll be lucky to read 60 books this year when I read 568 books in 2015! (it’s gone steadily downhill from there)
I retired 10 years ago. While I was still working, most of my reading was done during my 1/2 hour subway ride, although I did read some in the evening but that was more sporadic. Working just took too much of my mental energy. I read a variety of genres but I tended to read romance only at home. The subway ride was filled with nonfiction, mystery, or sci fi/fantasy. I donāt know why other than I didnāt want to be caught crying on the subway if the story had sad parts (or laughing out loud at the funny parts). I made the mistake of reading The Lovely Bones on the subway and hoped my fellow travelers didnāt notice my huge sniffles.
Since then I can read whatever and whenever I want. Itās mostly historical romance or mystery or itās nonfiction (history). I have started listening to audiobooks when on long drives or when doing jigsaw puzzles. But mostly itās read on my kindle. I save physical books for the pool or beach.
I was thinking about how my “reading” habits have changed just recently. I don’t read romance nearly as much as I used to. Mainly just old favorites when I feel like it. Thing is I’d like to find some new-to-me romance authors to enjoy but, well, there is a decided lack of enthusiasm about actually searching for them. I think mainly because I like romances with a little bit of something else in them. Some mystery, fantasy, sci-fi, superhero or mythology. Yeah the list goes on and on. Plus humor, definitely like humor. It’s not that I want everything un every book but I do want more than just romance. Finding what I like can be exhausting though.
On the other hand, this summer especially I have noticed a definite increase in my interest in cozy (lighter?) mysteries TV/movie series with a romance element in them. And I’m finding most of them through watching both British & American mystery series on streaming services. Because most of them are based on book series I’m finding new authors to check out that way.
And I’m also reading a lot more non-fiction recently. In fact I have several books about Agatha Christie in my to-be-read list on Kindle right now. One is a biography & the other two are about her main detectives, Poirot & Marple.
Is it where I’m at in my life? I have no idea but I do know I have no patience for “the hunt” right now. I just find them where I find them I guess.
Same. I call it “Romance and”. As I said above, I don’t read a lot of “just” contemporary romance; I like the plotty stuff, and I tend to stick to the same half-dozen authors I trust when it comes to contemps. So, you could find a fair number of “romance and” books from my reviews š
I’ve made only one real change in the last ten years, which is that I read hardly any historical romance nowadays, and that the bulk of the romances I read are m/m ones. I still don’t read all that many contemporaries – that was the case even when I did read m/f – because so many are too sweet and low-angst for my tastes, so I tend to go for “romance and” (suspense, fantasy, etc.)
Another change is that I’m not listening to as many new releases in audio format as I did – principally because it’s been so difficult to find new titles I want to listen to! More and more are released each week, but the vast majority make me go ‘meh’ (too many college-age characters that just don’t interest me, silly-sounding plots, over-reliance on certain tropes, too much melodrama and too low-conflict etc.) so I’m either doing a fair bit of listening to older favourites, or picking up older titles that, for some reason, I missed first time around.
My percentage of time rereading has gone way down, largely from the pressure of an ever-growing tbr list.
I finally broke through a decades-old barrier of rarely starting books I couldnāt finish the same day. The excess of longer books in my tbr lists has barely begun to shrink since that breakthrough because of all the new books Iāve bought due to the next item.
I have hugely shifted the genre balance of my reading since I started reading litrpg and gamelit last year. (Iām not sure if ācultivation fantasyā overlaps either of those labels or is considered a separate sub-genre.) Some of those books are also haremlit, and Iāve also tried some haremlit that isnāt litrpg or gamelit. Catching up on one new-to-me litrpg series can consume all my reading time for weeks. For example, He Who Fights with Monsters by Shirtaloon books 1 through 9 took me two weeks to read last summer. These sub-genres have exploded in recent years, so there are very wide ranges on multiple measurement axes within them: violence, seriousness, humor, romance, etc.
The Beware of Chicken series by Casualfarmer, which is both a cultivation fantasy and a parody of that sub-genre, is also one of the most fun to read.
Hmm, I posted something this morning but it seems to have gotten lost. Let me know if I need to add it again.
Don’t know what happened there – our spam filter is sometimes a little overzealous! I found your comment and have posted it – sorry about that.
Thanks for the help
10 years ago I only read physical books, none of them romance. These days a physical book is a rarity and romance is half my reading.
Definitely the move from physical books to ebooks. Other than books Iāve received as gifts or bought second-hand at the Friends of the Library book sale, I canāt remember the last (new) physical book I purchased. And, as Iāve noted before, once I started using an e-reader, I found myself reading way more contemporary romance than historical because there were so many more contemporaries available as freebie, 99-cent specials, or on KU. In addition, I rarely read m/m romance ten years ago, today m/m accounts for at least half of the romances I read.
I switched from dead-trees to e-books over a decade ago, I think – I can’t actually remember the last time I read a physical book. Mostly because of problems with my eyesight, but also because I love the convenience of having hundreds of books with me wherever I go on my Kindle. There seems to be a thriving market for paperbacks among younger people, which surprises me, because I’d have thought they’d be all about the tech. But from what my kids tell me about places like BookTok, they’re often much more preoccupied with the aesthetic of the book covers than the actual content!
I work in a public library, and staff has long noticed that older patrons tend to vastly prefer ebooks compared to younger patrons. I guess I can include myself in that; I’m in my early 30s and probably 2/3 of my reading is via physical books. The same is true for many readers my age and younger. I think there are several reasons for this — chiefly, we’ve been raised with mandatory screens for most of our lives. Screens (and tech overall) are inextricable from work and education, and in my experience with fellow readers, this has lead to pushback in areas of our lives where we have alternatives, particularly with activities like reading for leisure. Personally, I also love books as physical objects. I like the process of discovery when browsing shelves at a used bookstore, or even going through boxes of donations that we get every day. It’s almost a meditative process, and for me, this can extend to the actual experience of reading.
I think the explanation is more mundane. I have vast collection of paperbacks that I cannot read comfortably anymore because my vision decreased sharply with age and the font size and contrast are no longer comfortable. My mother, in her 80ies, also needs a larger font but cannot hold a hardcover in her hands long enough to read comfortably, these are too heavy for her. So having a lightweight ebook reader with an adjustable font size makes a huge difference for us both and I pretty much switched to e-books even though I look at my paperback covers lovingly from time to time š
Ebooks are definitely more convenient! I was just reflecting on why my generation of millenials and younger seem to still gravitate toward physical books even though it might seem counterintuitive.
Iām a boomer, and one of my favorite subreddits is Thrift Store Hauls where people upload pictures of items theyāve found at thrift shops, garage sales, estate sales, etc. Iām always amazed at how many posters are thrilled to find old VHS tapes, DVDs, CDs, vinyl records, and books (and I must admit to being incredibly jealous when they find any Le Creuset cookware). In fact, just last week on the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, the hosts were discussing the āphysical mediaā they treasure the most. I, writing this in a room where CDs and DVDs take up an entire wall, while my dining room & bedroom have floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with books, must admit to being somewhat bemused by this turn of events. Everything old is new again, I guess, lol.
I think you are both right. My daughter loves books but I love ebooks because they’re easier to read–fonts! not so heavy!–AND because of the search feature. I am less able to recall characters’ names in complex books or I want to know more about, for example, the Black Death and so I like to link to Wikipedia.
Iām reading more physical books than I did a decade ago, mostly because Iām reading less romance, which is the only genre I read on my kindle. Iām getting harder to please; Iāve pretty much abandoned āhistoricalā romance and what I do read is mostly contemporary and mostly MM, although Iām getting burned out on that too. Iāve read too many contemporary romances that have no particular structure and drag on for too long.
I enjoy the tactile quality of a physical book. Iām buying them for peanuts from charity shops and library book sales. Also I listen to a lot of audiobooks (due to time constraints) but Iām very picky about narrators. I read more mystery and spy novels these days.
Finally, Iām reading a lot of 20th century fiction rather than recent releases. I enjoy the more descriptive writing style, the social history and the more tightly edited fiction of the past. Iāve been reading some authors for the first time (e.g. Ian Fleming, Mary Stewart) and rereading teenage favourites like Christie, Sayers and Helen Macinnes.
What hasnāt changed is my habit of reading at least six books at the same time, in various formats and genres, so Iām always in the middle of something that suits my current reading mood,
Six! Impressive!
I’ve followed the same pattern you have, Dabney. Since 2016, I’ve been reading a lot more non-fiction and mystery and a lot less romance. I still think a great romance is the very best kind of read. I’m just not finding as many great ones.
Yes.
I used to read a lot more nonfiction. I used to read sci-fi and fantasy. The last few years I’ve migrated back to romance and mystery. I feel like I’m pretty much done with Scifi and fantasy — I just don’t have patience for learning a new world.
I find myself disinterested in series for that same reason.
I read more books overall than I did 10 years ago. I used to watch a lot of TV. When the coronavirus pandemic hit, there was less TV content for a while and I wasn’t interested in what was out there so I started reading more. Romance has remained the genre I read the most over the past 10 years but I started reading M/M romance in 2020 and that is now the majority of what I read. Like others have said, I have transitioned to reading mostly e-books. It’s just easier on the eyes and the hands! Lastly, 10 years ago my daughter was 13 and I read more YA than I do now, just because it was fun to read and discuss books together. Now she reads romance too and I get to introduce her to some of the classics. I still read some YA as well as a few mysteries but the percentage is definitely less than 10 years ago.
I read a lot, at least 5-10 books per month, a mix of fiction and non-fiction, almost all of them e-books. E-books are so much easier to read and faster to finish.
My reading of romances picked up hugely during the pandemic and its immediate aftermath but has tapered off quite a lot recently. I read crime fiction and the preferred sub-genre is complex mysteries and legal procedurals. I give a wide berth to psychological thrillers with unreliable narrators and serial killers.
I also read a lot of womenās fiction, books by BIPOC and queer authors. As far as non-fiction goes, I read whatever catches my fancyājust finished reading The Secret Lives of Numbers by Kate Kitagawa and Quentin Tarantinoās Cinema Speculation (if you enjoy his movies, you will enjoy this book).
The biggest change for me is more audio. I read about 125 books per year and as I’ve gotten older I find my eyes just can’t keep up. They get too dry, especially in the evenings, even with eyedrops. So, listening helps me to read “just a little while longer”.
Romance still makes up a large part of my reading, but I do love a good bio/memoir, historical fiction, urban fantasy or women’s fiction title. And just yesterday I picked up several James Baldwin titles I’ve been meaning to read.
On a somewhat unrelated note: I was in my local independent bookstore last weekend for “Romance Book Day”, and a B&N today, checking out the romance section(s). It looks like everyone is doing away with all of the mass market format books. My independent does not carry them at all and B&N’s section is getting smaller and smaller. (That seems to be true of all genres, not just romance.) There was not a single Heyer, JAL, Chase, Kinsale, Balogh, Goodman or Beverly Jenkins on any of the shelves at either bookstore. Of course, these authors have not published anything for a while but it’s still a little shocking. Lisa Kleypas and Julia Quinn are the only “long-published” authors whose works is available. I am pleased to see Alexis Hall, KJ Charles and McQuiston with titles on shelves. But there don’t seem to be any RS authors at all. There are many “new” AOCs with titles on shelves (Ali Hazelwood, Abby Jimenez, Jasmine Guillory) which is nice to see. But I can’t help feeling that newer (younger?) readers to the genre are missing out if they depend on their local bookstores to guide them.
Same with my eyes! They just can’t hold up to hours of reading in a day anymore š
I’ve found UK bookshops are really poor when it comes to romance. Even Foyles, supposedly one of the world’s biggest bookshops only had ONE shelf unit devoted to romance last time I was there a couple of years back, and in the 80s and 90s, when I worked in the West End, none of the bookshops I regularly frequented had romance sections – what romance there was was shelved by author name, so you had to know what you were looking for.
Lack of availability is probably why I didn’t start reading romance in a big way until Amazon arrived and I could find new authors and get books that weren’t published in the UK.
Maybe there are bookshops here that are doing better, but from my experience, romance novels beyond a few ‘big’ names are still hard to find.
When I started reading romances in about 2005, you could not find romances in independent bookstores (mostly because they were only published in mass market paperback formats). But Barnes & Noble, Waldenbooks and Borders – all big chain stores – did a pretty good job of carrying many romances (both new releases and backlist titles). B&N is the only chain left here in the US. Up until a few months ago, B&N still had scads of mass market books. But publishers are only printing trade paperback these days. I’m assuming Chase, Balogh, et. al. are going to be published in trade format going forward. Brick and mortar stores seem to require the higher prices in order to stay in business.
I’m just reading less in general and watching more TV. A lot of that is due to my aging eyes, making it difficult for me to read for an extended period of time. Also, I have a new job and where I used to read at lunch, I now eat lunch with new colleagues (so no reading). Then, in the evening, I have to go to bed really early if I want to get any reading in at all as I have to get up earlier than my previous job. . I’m definitely reading almost completely with my e-reader now as well, with the ability to make the font larger, and ease of holding it in bed (and not having to hold up my arm with the other side of the book).
My reading stats on goodreads: 2015- 568 books, 2016- 413 books; 2017-299 books; 2018 -289 books; 2019 – 197 books; 2020 – 166 books; 2021 – 121 books; 2022 – 104 books; 2023-104 books, and so far in 2024 I’m at only 36 books and I’ve revised my book goal from 100 to 80 now to 60 books this year.
That is a big change.
Excluding re-reads (that probably means I read 25% more books than I kept track of on Goodreads), I’ve read 50 books so far this year, 79 in 2023, 75 in 2022, 82 in 2021, 70 in 2020, 87 in 2019, 78 in 2018, 133 in 2016, 153 in 2015, 163 in 2014, 187 in 2013, 190 in 2012, and 221 in 2011.
Wow. I had no idea I was reading so much less. I think it’s because I read so much less romance.I’m reading longer and more complex books these days.
I dont watch much TV and haven’t for a number of years now. I keep meaning to watch all those great shows I hear about, but by the time I can get to them, I’ve probably forgotten what they’re called! And now most are available immediately, if Dave and I start a show, I can only do 2 episodes max of an evening so I can get to bed at a reasonable time so I’m not a zombie at work – where he’ll sit up for another couple of hours and watch more – and I can’t be bothered to catch up. I’d rather read!
Greg and I watch two episodes of streaming TV several nights a week. We pick one TV show–we just finished Hacks which we loved. It’s a marital bonding thing for us. We never watch any news or anything other than sports on our TV but I do love committing to a single show from start to finish.
This sounds very familiar!
I have looked at what books I read in 2013, comparing with 2023, and I found that romance novels were the 68 % of the titles and in 2023 they ascended to 87 %. Non fiction went from 10 % to 3 %. And literary books, or other genres like historical novels (non romance), went form 21 % to 20 %. Of course it does not reflect the time invested in one kind of book or the other, because I can read a romance novel in a day, while a literary one takes me ten or twenty days. What these numbers reflect, for me, is that 2023 was a more anxious year than 2013, because I tend to read easiest things when I’m overstressed.
I hope this year will be less anxious for you and more enjoyable
Thank you, I hope so!
Iām a retired teacher/librarian, and the biggest change in my reading since retirement is the number of books I DNF. Too many books seem to be unnecessarily āpaddedā or poorly edited. I used to read mainly historical romance, but lately I have been disappointed by anachronistic behavior and dialogue. Many are modern romances dressed up in period costumes and language. ( Bridgerton TV, anyone?). I really enjoy historical mysteries, particularly those with a bit of romance. I have also been rereading and enjoying authors I loved as a teen: Mary Stewart, Phyllis A. Whitney, and Georgette Heyer. My library has many of their titles available as ebooks and of course, all are free. Libraries for the win!