What type of books do you return to a lot?

Mysteries.
Thrillers.
Science Fiction/Fantasy

I like women authors (but I read both).

I like mysteries, because I love geometry. Proofs. Solved.

I like Scifi/Fantasy because it is sociology in disguise.

Brain cramp, I read this the first time and it came through as return a lot. I hardly ever return books so I was confused.
I love history and military books.
Mysteries
Horror stories
And any thing else I can get my hands on.
Plus, Katawa Grey asked about what gender authors we usually read, and I noticed I mainly read male authors. So I’ve been looking for more female authors. Wow, there’s some great female writers out there.

Women authors—Especially Jane Austen. Her books are timeless.
Classic literature
Some light fantasy
Psychology

The Dictionary. Sure, I use online spell check but there is true joy in flipping open the dictionary and discovering a new word serendipitously.

I prefer non-fiction and am not much of a novelist fan.

My venue includes science, nature, philosophy, psychology and history for the most part.

I just finished 2 new wildlife books ” Bear attacks of the century” & ” Cougar attacks, encounters of the worst kind.” Both exhilarating, educational and excellent!

Made last nights evening constitution of going out to lock up the critters in my barn after dark extra “spine tingling” pun intended, with the cougar stories fresh in my mind.

The hills have eyes, oh yes they do! lol

Science fiction. Period.

I have a very large collection of it that fills several walls in my house. A sizable portion of them are signed by the authors.

Science fiction is smart. It provides useful information as well as fast-moving plots (usually—I just read a novel that had barely any plot to speak of). These days, the writers are very good, and they generally create believable, well fleshed-out characters and the characters drive the novel. The writers are erudite and they write well—at least the ones I read. I guess you could say I’m more of a literary science fiction enthusiast.

Perhaps most important to me, is these novels deal with ideas. Not just any ideas, either. They are ideas about how to make the world a better place. Science Fiction, for me, is largely a genre about social change, which is the business I’ve been in most of my life.

Reading this question quickly, I am reminded of the quirky possibilities of English.

“What kind of cars do you return to a lot?”

Books that I reread frequently are Joyce’s Ulysses, Moby Dick, Poetic Meter and Poetic Form(by Paul Fussell), books on organic gardening, and reviews of Latin, French and Spanish language and grammar.

Books I return to a lot are the collected poems of Yeats, Auden, Frost, Mary Oliver and some minor contemporary poets.

@Adirondackwannabe: Check out the Kate Atkinson series of detective mysteries featuring the manly but androgynous Jackson Brodie, PI from Edinburgh.

A bonus poem for the readers here; The Return of the Subjunctive

@gailcalled Thanks, I’ll look into it.

All sorts of thrillers, I guess. Wait, let me check the books on my iPad. Lol.

Ok, so far I have these…

The Big Short ( economics )
The Lost Symbol ( thriller )
The Quant Investors Almanac ( investing )
Sherlock Holmes and the
Plague of Dracula ( horror )
Start Small, Stay Small ( business )
From Russia With Love ( spy thriller )
iWoz by Steve Wozniak ( biography )
The Variant by John August ( sci-fi thriller )
Hypatia by Charles Kingsley ( history )
Dialogues by Tony Bernardi ( poetry )
Killshot by Elmore Leonard ( thriller )
The Girl With The Glass Feet ( fantasy )
Ten Days That Shook The World ( history )
Swann’s Way ( biography )
The Watchers ( thriller )
The Hemlock Cup ( biography )
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep ( sci-fi )
Carte Blanche ( spy thriller )
The Ridge ( thriller )
Robocalypse ( sci-fi )
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary ( thriller )
World War Z ( thriller )
Full Dark, No Stars ( thriller )
Winnie the Pooh ( fantasy )
Frankenstein ( thriller )
Dracula ( thriller )
Heart of Darkness
Alice in Wonderland ( fantasy )
God is not Great ( religion )

Yup, thriller it is…

What type of books do you return to a lot? Children’s Literature. They are comfortable tales that make me feel nostalgia, safety, bubbling happiness, joy, and hope. In general, I also return to books that had passages that left a mark on me. I may not reread the book in its entirety, but I have read certain passages hundreds of times. I’ll pull the book off the shelf, flip to the page (and I know where those pages are) and breathe in the words.

Themes: I like journeys, homeward bound stories, gentle giants, otherness, pacifism, anti-war.

Genre: Postmodernism, Fairy Tales, Mythology, Magical Realism, Drama, Picture Books.

Authors: Tove Jansson, Milan Kundera, A.A. Milne, Italo Calvino, Lemony Snicket, Lewis Carroll.

Have these types changed over the years or remained fairly constant? It has remained fairly consistent considering I started reading Children’s Literature when I was a child, but my interest in postmodernism and magical realism are definitely departures from what I read when I was younger.

Why do you think these things draw you to them so much? Possibly because they make me feel peaceful. I read plenty of more biting stories, but the ones that I pull off my shelf and hand to a friend saying “Here—you have to read this!” are almost exclusively Children’s Literature or books that reflect my core pacifism. Books are my safety net.

For pure entertainment I love fantasy(my very guilty pleasure!) but when my brain is involved, like @worriedguy I like to look through the dictionary. I’m also a fan of books about words. One of my favorites is Bill Bryson’s Mother Tongue. I’m also trying to reacquaint myself with the Latin language, which I studied and loved in high school and college.

I like science fiction, fantasy, biography, poetry and children’s books.

I have read every genre out there except Westerns. I don’t know why. Maybe next time I go to the library, I’ll pick up one.

Quirky stories by and about Southern Women. I especially love Fannie Flagg, Anne B. Ross, and Sandra Dallas.

I also love Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters.

And Sherlock Holmes stories.

And any book by Charles Dickens.

And David Sedaris.

Hey everyone! Thank you so much for answering. I want to give more personalized responses but I am just too exhausted right now! It is really interesting the variety of answers. Some people are very focused in their tastes and others are all over the place. One thing is for certain, Fluther is filled with book lovers!

@Earthgirl, it really makes sense- we’re overwhelmingly well educated and informed people who have opinions on a variety of subjects. It goes without saying that we like to read! (BTW I agree- it is nice to hear about books I’ve not read before!)

Mysteries.

Because of an earlier comment on fluther (I cannot seem to reference it) about the flim, “The Name of the Rose,” I have just watched it for the first time.

Sadly, the movie was not so good, but it has caused me to start to reread the novel, which I loved* when I first discovered it.

The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco.

The kind of books I return are the ones that start to drag on about things that are not integral to the plot of the novel. The exception is someone like Stephen King. His descriptive writing is either, to me, very suspense and/or humorous. It just works for me, keeps me gripped until the end. Whatever book is familiar to you will probably be the one you’ll get intimate with…and not want to let go. YEP.

Mostly reference books. As a programmer in my day job, I have numerous programming manuals on JavaScript, MySQL, HTML, CSS, etc. And as an amateur writer, I have reference books dealing with everything from hospital/surgical procedures to vast lists of international baby names. But I also re-read old SF novels by Heinlein, Niven, Anthony from time to time.