What do writers read?

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Snoozing

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Just wondering, besides what we all write, what does everybody read? At present I'm reading a big omnibus of Jodi Picoult, which contains Second Glance, The Tenth Circle, and Nineteen Minutes. I admire the amount of research she puts into her work, besides the fact she tells a pretty good story. After read another book of hers from the library but I cannot remember which one it was.
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Sophia

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Hi, Snoozing, and welcome to AW! :hi: You might like to take a look at the What are you reading? thread in the AW Bookclub. There's also a SF/F version of it, here. :)
 

regdog

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Kylabelle

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Cereal boxes. News headlines online, catching typos and grammatical errors. Pretty much anything with words in it, with one exception. I don't read the fine print. Too much effort.

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jaksen

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Yeah I read cereal boxes, too. Ads that come in the mail. Catalogs. Any and all kinds of literature: YA, MG, children's. Poetry. Horror, mystery, scifi and literary. Anthologies. Short story collections. Nonfiction and history.

I wish to hell there was something I didn't like to read so I could cross it off my list.
 

Cathy C

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Pretty much anything, but I try to avoid recent books by authors on my same shelf, to avoid accidentally writing a similar thing. :)
 

Tom Johnson

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Although I write a lot of SF, I'm slowly moving away from reading it. Sadly, I've found a lot of junk out there lately. When I'm not reviewing mystery novels for publishers, I'm reading action and spy novels. I particularly enjoy stories set in the Far East. Visit my Blog sometime.
 

Jamesaritchie

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Everything. The brothers Grimm, Shakespeare, Melville, Dickens, Twain, London, Hemingway, every poet I can find, and five hundred modern writers in almost every genre there is.

Plus every type of nonfiction imaginable, all the way from math to Mozart, and newspapers and magazines, and recipes, and Microsoft help manuals. Writers read everything, and have since they first learned to read.
 

Jamesaritchie

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Although I write a lot of SF, I'm slowly moving away from reading it. Sadly, I've found a lot of junk out there lately. When I'm not reviewing mystery novels for publishers, I'm reading action and spy novels. I particularly enjoy stories set in the Far East. Visit my Blog sometime.

There's still a lot of wonderful SF out there, too. Every genre has it's share of junk, or, more likely, stories we don't personally like, but SF is still one of the best written genres out there.
 

Jaycee Young

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I used to buy books from Amazon for my Kindle, but since I finished my manuscript a few months ago, I've been reading books voraciously and I couldn't afford buying that many! So, now, I've been going to the local neighborhood library and checking out armfuls of books every week. I want to read anything and everything that will help me to look objectively at my manuscript and rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. I've been reading romances, thrillers, classics, literary... I want to read anything that I think will help me to perfect my craft of writing. So, far, I think it has helped.
 

mada

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I read a lot of indie romance, but I've vowed to branch out this summer. I want to read more mainstream fiction, more traditionally published authors, and get out of "romance" in general. I feel like it's going to be a key to any sort of growth because of the current saturation of the market. I want books that will force me to think and make me cry at the end, wishing I had their talent.
 

Snoozing

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The man working near me marking tests recently spent his meal breaks reading junk mail. Maybe he is a writer in disguise!
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heza

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I favor the fantastic and read mostly SFF, paranormal, or sweeping romances. I read in my genre when I'm writing, especially when I'm writing MG because reading a lot of adult material can't cause my voice to shift if I'm mid draft.
 

Stringer Greenbrier

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The general advice is to read what you write, but to be honest with you I can't really tell what I'm writing anymore. I usually read the classics and postmodernism, currently halfwaybthrough Blood Meridian and Gravity's Rainbow.
 

Moont

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Everything I can, but I prefer horror, science fiction, fantasy and thrillers
 

Chekurtab

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I read bestsellers, literary or genre, modern and classics.
 

Shaba

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I'll read everything except erotica. It's just not my thing:-/, sorry.
 

Smeasking

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I read a bit of everything. I read a lot of what I love, but I also read some of what I wouldn't normally read because sometimes I learn more from those. I think it's because when you read the same subject matter all the time a lot of it reads the same--blends together. But if you read something out of your norm, you tend to pick up on the differences and can learn a lot by it. Does that make sense? Sorry if it doesn't, lol. :)
 

JustSarah

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I read a lot of poetry and short fiction. I'm not really sure why I'm more drawn to that than novels. I love love novellas though.
 
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