“Do you like to read? Or do you read a lot?” YES!! Yes to both these questions. I read a couple of pages of a physical book or listen to a bit of an audiobook each day; I have already done both today 🙂 I did not realize that this amount of reading was abnormal until I was into my twenties. Both sets of my grandparents and my parents always had a book or two (and a cigarette) sitting beside their recliner, bed, or on the table. My aunt J would have four or five books [some in the same genre] going at the same time – I can not do this as I get too easily get mixed up on plots and characters.
I average one or two books read each week depending on the length of the book and what I am doing that week. I listen to audiobooks while cooking, cleaning/gardening/puttering around the house and while crafting so easily an hour each day, then I try to read a physical book before bed. The reading of physical books is a tad lacking of late because I have been busily (not franticly) crocheting blankets for four babies that are due within a six week period so audiobooks in bed. When we travel for hubby’s work or gaming conventions and I am knitting in a hotel room, I might read three or four books. I am currently lean more toward fantasy and biography when reading.
My hubby is such a prolific reader that he routinely finishes three or four 20+ hour audiobooks a week – he listens at 1.5 or 2.0 speed and has a three hour round trip commute to work three days a week, but still that is a feat! His favorite genre is science fiction, specifically what I call “space marines genre”, because he revels in space exploration and well developed literary worlds.
I have read a lot of excellent books throughout my life. I sat down with hubby one night and we compiled this list of books based on our mutual agreement that they are (A) a good book and (B) we would buy it to have someone read it.
Books which I Recommend Reading at Least Once
Great Expectations by Charles Darwin
A Christmas Carol by Charles Darwin – the audiobook read by Tim Curry is worth finding
As You Like It by William Shakespeare
Island in the Sea of Time by S.M. Sterling
Good Omens by Neal Gaimon and Sir Terry Pratchett – I have purchased and gifted this book multiple times over the past twenty years.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
Guards! Guards! by Sir Terry Pratchett
Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Addams
All Systems Red by Martha Wells – this entire series is good
The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie
Monster Hunters International by Larry Correia – we own a signed copy that does not leave our home, a copy which we lend out, and we have gifted multiple copies since discovering this series.
Get Well Soon: History’s Worst Plagues and the Heroes who Fought Them by Jennifer Wright
Any western by Louis Lamour – in memory of my papaws