Twenty Years of Reading Logs, Part 4: General Literature

My fourth post in my series about my reading since college covers the category "general literature." This is my catch-all term for what you might also call "mimetic fiction" (and also, say, poetry). That is to say, stories that take place in the world of the reader/writer. This definition obviously excludes science fiction and fantasy, but it does include some genre fiction, like mysteries and espionage. In a world where I read more mystery, I'd probably break it out, but I don't read enough of it to justify that.

	2003-07	2007-11	2011-15	2015-19	2019-23	TOTAL	PCT
T. Hardy	1	7	5	1	0	14	0.5%
C. Dickens	1	2	4½	2	4	13½	0.5%
G. Eliot	0	4	4	2	2	12	0.4%
E. Gaskell	0	3	5	0	0	8	0.3%
W. Collins	1	1	3½	2	0	7½	0.3%
C. Kingsley	0	1	3	3	0	7	0.2%
Other Victorian	8	9	32	17	0	66	2.3%
Horatio Hornblower	3	5	0	11	0	19	0.6%
Inspector Lynley	8	3	7	0	0	18	0.6%
James Bond 007	0	0	2	10	6	18	0.6%
F. H. Burnett	0	1	14	0	0	18	0.6%
V. Woolf	1	8	1	0	0	10	0.3%
A. C. Doyle	0	0	7	0	0	7	0.2%
L. Durrell	1	4	1	0	0	6	0.2%
J. Winterson	1	2	1	1	1	6	0.2%
S. Fry	5	0	0	0	0	5	0.2%
Other Literature	56	82	30	27	13	208	7.1%
TOTAL	86	132	120	76	26	440	15.0%
PCT	15.6%	21.7%	17.8%	12.3%	5.4%	15.0%

On average, general lit makes up 15% of my reading diet, but this has ebbed and flowed a lot over the years. It peaked 2007-11, which would be the period I had just come out of college (which substantially reshaped my reading tastes) and was beginning grad school (where I was of course taking a lot of seminars that required me to read a lot of literature). These days it's down to a mere 5%; doing the Hugos has me prioritizing genre reading and, well, something has to give.

Unsurprisingly, the Victorians (the first seven rows on the chart) peak in 2011-15, the time when I read for my comprehensive exams. What did surprise me was to see that other than two books by Eliot and four by Dickens, I have read nothing by a Victorian for four years! Even worse, no Elizabeth Gaskell in eight! What must Tom Recchio think of me?

Some specific notes:

• Charles Dickens clearly benefits from my project to read one Dickens novel every Christmas. I only have a few more to go; I think I might open it up to all the Victorian novels I own but have not read at that point. So I will at least get one per year!
• Horatio Hornblower: I read most of the series just before grad school, but stalled out; I then returned to it years later, starting over, meaning it's the thing I've read more of than any other "literature" series.
• Inspector Lynley Mysteries: For a while, I was working my way through this series, but then I caught up and haven't read any since. Someday I will have to swing back to it and read everything that's come out since I left off.
• James Bond was the focus of my attention for a while, as I read one book every three months or so. Now I've read them all! That said, there's some comics I want to read (and I never did finish the movies), so I really must get back to that.
• Frances Hodgson Burnett: Who would have guessed she'd be one of my top authors!? Blame Tom Recchio, of course.
• Jeanette Winterson: Other than Dickens, Winterson is the only author represented in all five of my four-year segments. So I may not be moving through her work quickly, but I am doing so steadily.

I wish I had more non-sf&f in my rotation... but how I might do this and not shortchange all the other things I wish I read more of, I have no idea.