Travis McClain

I was discussing my reading habits with some friends tonight, and mentioned that (including the title I'm currently reading), my last three books were all autobiographies. One of my friends wondered how I could read three books of the same type like that. I countered that Johnny Cash, Alec Guinness and Ronald Reagan all had very different stories to tell, so it's not as though I were actually reading three similar books. Beyond being autobiographies, they had very little in common. He prefers to go from, say, analytical non-fiction to literature, to poetry, to memoirs, etc. He will also read a work of fiction and non-fiction concurrently.

I explained that, for me, I am not interested in variety for variety's sake, that I would rather explore a subject that already interests me as deeply as I can. In music, for instance, a large percentage of his library are Greatest Hits collections. I, on the other hand, will buy a soundtrack because an artist I'm into contributed a song to it and I want to keep my library up-to-date and complete.

So, which style do you favor? Have you noticed a shift in the trend for yourself at any point?

tonyc3742

I generally read lots of the same author, style, or genre, till I get bored, then I find someone else to read a bunch of. So for me, depth in cycles.
(I also generally read more than one book at a time, so I am sometimes able to get multiple genres/authors as well).
I will try some things I think I "should read", but if I don't enjoy it, I'll quit it. I'm not in school anymore so I don't make myself read things I don't enjoy at least a little bit.

Hank Ringworm

I usually have to have some light fiction or poetry to go along with my "more serious" non-fiction reading. That said, my "more serious" reading is depth-oriented: read as much as I can about a subject before I get sick of it. Which is usually fairly soon.

I can be persuaded to go "extra deep" when confronted with a particularly interesting author/subject. I read The Jungle Book last year, then, quite quickly, 12 or 13 other Kipling books/collections. Of course, the subjects of those books and stories varied considerably. Sometimes, a really good book on a really interesting subject (I'm thinking Leo Strauss's Natural Right and History here) is so damned exhausting that I can barely consider the subject once I'm done reading and thinking about the book.

Drop

You read 3 autobiographies about very different people, what subject are you exploring there? Sounds like you're reading is quite varied (which you have pointed out). I don't see much difference in reading 3 fiction books in the first person and 3 autobiographies.

I read whatever interests me at the moment. Sometimes I read a lot sci-fi books and other times biographies and then maybe a string of children's books, or one of each in row. I don't think too much about it. I just follow instinct.

So, there really isn't any option for me in this poll.

Travis McClain

I indicated that I like to delve into a subject, and that perhaps suggested that these three selections were part of the exploration of a single subject. This is obviously not the case (unless you used some kind of tangential "entertainers" label on the three). At the time I checked out these three books, I did so because they happened to be the three books that drew me to them in the library that day. I felt then, and certainly now that I've read them, that they are significantly varied.

boredsilly

I'm a variety guy. Once I'm done with a book on a certain subject, that's usually sufficient for me, and I'm ready to read about something else. The fallacy in this is that I don't get a deep understanding of or contradictory points of view on any given subject. I have to rely on the one book I've read to be "correct". This is why I tend to not read about politics much. This is mainly for non-fiction though. I can read a series of books by the same author back to back to back no problem. I view fiction and non-fiction reading as two very different beasts.

Maria

Well I would prefer to keep things varied as much as possible, to "broaden my horizon."