My tastes in reading haven’t changed dramatically since I was younger, but they have evolved.

Because I Said So

Before entering university (the second time … and not even then really), I wouldn’t read what I didn’t want to unless it was a prescribed text. If I hated the book, then I would just skim it and find the important points for assignments … or just barely scrape a pass mark. I couldn’t do it! I couldn’t read more than a chapter of Robinson Crusoe!

Now, I read books because I need to learn more and want to widen my reading repertoire. There are plenty of books on my shelves (actually, they’re in boxes now) that I wouldn’t have imagined that I would read, much less buy, when I was in my teens. And I have enjoyed many of them despite the negative associations I had of them when I was younger.

Sugoi!

I’ve read an insane amount of manga/manhua. I don’t let it consume my life from 7pm-3am anymore but I still read quite a lot and have started collecting my favourite series. I often even read manga that I don’t really care about, and that’s the beauty of graphic novels really, they’re so easy to consume. Which did affect my writing and reading negatively for a while. I became impatient with reading and wrote as if the images in my head were accompanying the writing, not really painting them in the work.

Mature Themes for Mature Audiences

It’s fun to think about how my taste changes as I’ve grown. Though it’s a given, it’s still so interesting to think about; how as we grow up the things we relate to and the things we want just shift greatly. Books that I was completely enamoured with when I was 10-18, I’d find too juvenile to read now … or the rose-coloured glasses have come off, and I hate almost everything about it. As I mature as a writer, this is also something that changes the way I perceive what I’ve read and in turn what I want to read. What I’m also interested in, though, are the timeless things we love. The things we’ll always read about. Sometimes, I don’t change what I want to read, I just need to find the level that suits me now, like going from the pleasantries of The Hobbit to Game of Thrones.

Not Just Encyclopaedias

I used to like flicking through encyclopaedias and subject books. Actually, I still do, I just read more widely in non-fiction now that it doesn’t seem like it. Growing up, I was obsessed with books that could teach me something new no matter where I flicked to. Bird books, dinosaur books, space books, herbs and flowers, crystals and stars and elements. Those were the most common subjects I would look for. I now own a few of them. I also try to read a lot more on writing itself.

I still read to educate and entertain myself, but don’t read to escape anymore. I don’t read as obsessively as I used to either.