Feature & Follow (August 3) – Reading Habits

Welcome to the Feature & Follow Hop, hosted by Parajunkee’s View and Alison Can Read!

If you’re here for the first time, I’d love if you could follow via email, RSS, LinkyFollowers or Networked Blogs. Just let me know your follow method of choice in the comments, and I’ll be happy to return the favor.

And if you’re not new, welcome back! Repeat visitors are better than the cool side of the pillow on a hot night.

This week’s question:

Do your reading habits change based on your mood? Do you read a certain genre if you are feeling depressed or happy?

Totally. Of course, my default setting some form of fantastic speculative fiction. Those are my manufacturer settings, and they cannot be altered.

However, sometimes my brain malfunctions and I know I can’t handle complex world-building or intricate mythology. I just need something straightforward and simple. Then it’s contemporary or chick lit time.

Other times, when my emotions get strangely violent (oh come on, you know you have those moods too), I pick up an epic fantasy with lots of swordplay and rousing speeches. Or maybe a crazy sci-fi with explosions galore. The main point is that sometimes I just need carnage.

If I’m feeling sad and abnormally weepy, I can go one of two ways. Either I need to read something super upbeat and cheerful to snap me out of it, or, more often, I read something super-sad to push me over the edge, like The Book Thief or The Fault in Our Stars. Sometimes it takes being pushed over the edge for me to finally snap out of my doldrums. It’s amazing what a good ugly-cry can do.

Then there’s times I just need to mellow out, and I go to my “comfort books,” like Harry PotterEnder’s Gameand the Farseer series. These are books that aren’t actually comforting — each one is complex and action packed — but books that I know I love so much, and am so deeply familiar with, that the act of reading them is soothing, in spite of the craziness in the pages.

So basically what I’m saying here is it’s a good thing that there’s lots of different types of books in the world.

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