Who Are You as a Reader?

Because everyone loves a quiz

Not for the first time, I’ve been thinking lately about myself as a reader—someone who brings you a column on reading twice a week, and yet, who can find lots of things to do instead of sitting down to read. I have a lifelong case of FOMO, which is not conducive to reading. As the weather warms up, this intensifies: sunshine! flowers! birds! I just want to be outside. What kind of a reader am I, anyway?

No, literally, what kind? I really got to thinking about that. Then I got curious about the rest of you, because I’m pretty sure we all read differently—not just the what, but also the how and the why. Then I thought, who doesn’t love a quiz about themselves? So, I wrote one about reading.

Give these questions a try. I think they’re kind of interesting. And so that we have a column today (!), I’ll share my own answers. I have a little task for you at the end, but if you want to say even more, I’d be curious to hear how you answered some of these.

Ready? Let’s go!

If you were a reader as a kid… why? Or, why not?

I’m not looking here for an answer like, because I liked books or stories. This question is more about the conditions that made it possible for you to become a reader—or not.

For me, there are two obvious ones. The first is that my father, in particular, is a reader, and we had lots of books in our house. When I was very young—until I went to school—my dad’s study was in the house, but even later, after he moved into the building next door, the unheated rooms over our garage were packed full of his old books and magazines. (Also a pool table, though sadly, I didn’t play with that enough to get good at it. Looking back, I wish I had.)

The second condition was that there was nothing else to do. We lived on a rural road with a farm on one side and our church on the other. For awhile, there were kids on the farm to play with, and by junior high school I was able to ride my bike farther afield to hang out with my friend Kim, who lived about a mile away. But by then my habit of filling the down time of childhood with reading was well established. If there had been someone to play with (little brothers usually don’t count) or something to do (with other people), I doubt I would have been reading so much.

Why do you gravitate to your favorite genres?

Again, I’m really asking about the conditions that sent you there. Why do you like what you like?

For me, historical fiction has always been a draw, and if I had to name a favorite genre, it would be something like literary historical fiction with a mystery or a surprise or a twist. I’ve mentioned many of these books before—think Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood; Possession by A.S. Byatt; and the one I just finished, The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles. But what sent me there?

Again, I probably have my dad to either thank or blame. I’m not so interested in the same history as he—presidential, with an emphasis on Abraham Lincoln. He and my mom dragged us to what felt like every presidential home and museum in the nation. Here’s one of my favorite photos from childhood because it illustrates perfectly how that flew with my two younger brothers and me at the time. This was taken outside Andrew Jackson’s home, The Hermitage, in Nashville in 1982.

Nevertheless, that education in history (there were other historical sites and vacations beyond the presidential) stuck. Also, we grew up in a 19th-century Victorian parsonage. We never met a ghost in the house, but I was aware that many families had lived there before us. Add to that easily more than 100 old hymns I learned to sing from memory during a churchgoing childhood and the fact that many of the books in our house were from the 19th century. History was stamped on my daily life and on my brain. However, being also a devoted reader of stories, I preferred my history as fiction. And, having become an avid reader with a developed sense of what constituted good writing, I wanted it to be literary. The bodice-rippers didn’t do it for me (though I do recall a brief Danielle Steele phase).

Why do other genres just not click for you?

This is a big question for me. I just can’t get into sci-fi or fantasy no matter how I try, and I’m not really sure why. I have friends who are hard-core fans of these genres, their imaginations charged up by and totally immersed in the worlds of Tolkien’s Middle Earth or LeGuin’s Earthsea or whatever (these examples are hard for me to come up with). I enjoyed The Hobbit, and then I was done.

I am not a literal person, so my inability to fall in love with these books isn’t due to a lack of willingness to suspend disbelief or fall down a rabbit hole of imagination. I get that these books are both about the imagined worlds and about our world, so it can’t be that I’m too interested in the “real world” to enjoy them. The only explanation I can come up with is that I’m a disorganized, disloyal reader. I don’t know if, as an adult, I’ve ever read the entire oeuvre of a single author (though I set myself a goal this year to get closer to doing that). But it seems to me that sci-fi and fantasy are best enjoyed by those who are willing to focus, to dive deep into one author’s work (or a few). I am easily distracted by what everyone else is reading. Maybe that has kept me from ever becoming a native of… I want to give you another fantasy reference here, but it isn’t coming to me.

What is your favorite reading memory?

Two of my nieces are the same ages as my daughters. They’re all grown up now, and sadly, they didn’t really grow up together. My nieces were in Florida while we were in Connecticut. But for about eight years, every summer they’d come up for a visit. And for about five of those summers, they were the perfect age to be read to. Before the girls came, I’d try to choose a book short enough to read in the few days we had, and one that I thought they all would like. My happiest reading memories are of hunkering down somewhere with the four of them—maybe the bedroom floor, late in the afternoon with their hair still wet from a trip to the pool or the floor of a tent we’d popped up in the back yard. As I recall, their favorite was When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. Part of the reason this is my favorite reading memory is because, as adults, my nieces have called that out as a happy memory. Man, if you can make a simple, happy, lasting memory for the kids, that’s gotta count as one of life’s great accomplishments.

What is your ideal reading day?

It’s snowing outside my house. Hard. I wake up, open the blinds so I can see the snow, then crawl back into bed with a good book for an hour. I get up to eat the breakfast my husband cooked. (Shout out to my husband, who really does cook me breakfast every weekend.) Then we sit together on the couch and read for most of the morning. The snow tapers off midday. My husband gets some soup or stew going in the crock pot. We clip into our cross-country skis and ski around the neighborhood. It’s beautiful. We say hi to the neighbors. We don’t bother shoveling because it’s going to snow some more. When we get back to the house, it smells delicious and our daughters, who are both visiting, are up. We all have lunch together. I build a fire in the fireplace, and we all spend the afternoon quietly doing our own things. I read a little bit more and take a nap and maybe do some writing. Late in the afternoon we do some shoveling and build a snowman. We have fondue for dinner and play some games. I can’t read anymore until bedtime (it will make me too sleepy), but I’ll squeeze in another 20 minutes or so then. Bottom line: A great reading day for me requires other people at home and bad weather that assures me I’m not missing anything out in the world. It’s a snowy day because, obviously, snow is much prettier and more fun than rain.

Here’s a cliched one, but I think it’s fun to ask:

If you could invite any three authors, living or dead, to join you for dinner, who would they be?

I think Mark Twain would be a great conversationalist, but I’m afraid he’d be overbearing unless my other two guests were super confident. I would love to see him up against a 21st-century woman, so I might invite Ann Patchett to keep him in line. He’d be really interested in her bookstore and her TikTok, I think. I’d be interested in talking about her writing. Then I need a third guest who could hold their own, without being rude or derailing the dinner. Someone as versatile as Twain and Patchett with something of their own to contribute. Should I go with three Americans, or bring in some international flavor? Should I find someone from an earlier century? (Weirdly, both Twain and Patchett were writing in the 20th century! He died in 1910, and her first novel was published in 1992.)

One thing I notice about this classic exercise is that I’m actually trying to create a conversational group that will work, not just inviting my favorite writers—or any random group. I mean, imagine if you invited Emily Dickinson (who might whisper, “Pass the salt, please”), J.D. Salinger (who wouldn’t show up), and Elena Ferrante (whose real identity is unknown). No, you must think about group dynamics!

If I didn’t start with Twain, my other go-to for great conversation (plus a big ego to be tamed) would be Benjamin Franklin. But you can’t put those two guys at the table together. And at another party, I would definitely want George Saunders in the slot for a living writer. Maybe a George party: George Eliot, George Saunders, and… Anyway, I really had to work on this one, but finally I landed on a third for Twain and Patchett: Mary Shelley. She knew how to hold her own with a bunch of guys (Byron, Keats, and of course, Shelley), and her mother was the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. No doubt both Twain and Patchett have read Frankenstein. What a juicy conversation we could all have! Maybe we’d finish the evening with a round of ghost stories.

Based on everything you’ve just observed about your reading habits, describe yourself as a reader in three words.

Literally, do it in the comments section below! (But first, really, think about the previous six questions.) I’ll start…