What's On Your Reading List?
Writers read because they love experiencing the “trip to another place in someone else’s head” but also to expand their vocabulary, learn diverse writing styles and techniques, and gain a deeper understanding of storytelling and reader expectations, ultimately improving their own craft.
If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” - Stephen King, On Writing
What We can Learn from Reading Different Genres
Horror stories build dread more consistently than any other genre. These stories express and explore fear in big and small ways.
Need help with dialog? Romance fiction features engaging banter between people and explores passion (and not just in a sexual way.)
Good science fiction creates a level of suspension of disbelief and explores big questions about humanity, science and technology.
If you have concerns about your world building skills, read fantasy. Well-written fantasy novels have systems maintaining realism in their worlds, societies, and magic systems that readers willingly accept.
Need to improve your plotting skills? Read Mysteries. Mysteries feature intricate story structures that weave clues and red herrings with thought and detail.
And of course, there are or on subjects you might wish to explore in your writing.
We're asking each other what is on our reading list but we don't limit it to physical books. Fiction and non-fiction come in lots of formats these days: visual, audio, digital, and physical. So feel free to include blogs, audiobooks, YouTube channels, or podcasts. It's all part of your reading list.
What WITS Authors are Reading
Jenn
Currently I am reading the new Hunger Games novel, Sunrise on the Reaping but Suzanne Collins. Before that I worked my way through the Gild series by Raven Kennedy.
My TBR list is long and I am trying my best to chip away at it these days, but so many good books keeping coming out!
Jenny
I'm often reading multiple books at once, and they're always in different genres. My day job books are usually non-fiction, and focus on necessary skills. Which means my leisure book at that same time will be much lighter. Below are my current reads.
Non-fiction
The Storyteller's Secret by Carmine Gallo. He also wrote, "Talk Like TED." From the blurb: "..communication expert Carmine Gallo reveals the keys to telling powerful stories that inspire, motivate, educate, build brands, launch movements, and change lives." I'm several chapters in, and taking notes like crazy. He is totally living up to the hype.
Fiction
Look on the Bright Side by Kristan Higgins. I just started this book, and it is already making me laugh. It's definitely a good summer beach read, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the love story develops between "Dr. Satan" (the super-repressed hero) and Dr. Smith, the new resident whose tender heart and quick-to-cry compassion just got her kicked out of oncology.
Lynette
I'm obsessed with Karin Nordin, a behavior change expert and CEO of Body Brain Alliance. I've found her YouTube videos helpful in identifying ways to improve my behaviors so I can be healthier in mind and body and that makes me a more productive writer.
The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey is my guilty pleasure reading and an inspiration and illustration of relationship and tension building in another world.
Lisa
Reading isn't just my passion, it also falls into my job description. I have the best job.
Non-fiction
Experience Jesus. Really: Finding Refuge, Strength, and Wonder through Everyday Encounters with God by John Eldredge. I'm a big fan of anything John or Stacy Eldredge write. While these are Christianity focused, they often have hugely applicable real-world themes. In this one, he proposes that we may have become disciples of the internet, losing our sense of wonder and replacing it with the need to know everything right away. He then goes into how this impacts our lives.
Fiction
Tentative title: Empire (forthcoming) by Victoria Bley. We're doing final prep on this historical fiction before publication and I get to spend my time with Borte and Temujen (better known as Ghenghis Khan), delighting in their romance while trying to remember that I'm supposed to be watching for errors.
Reading with Your Writer Hat On
Sometimes a writer cannot help but read with her writer hat on and analyze the story as she reads. Other times the reader in her won't let go of an engaging character or story line. Neither is wrong or right. We read for many reasons and no matter what we read, it feeds our writer brain.
Inspire us with your choices. Please share what's on your reading list in the comments.
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27 comments on “What's On Your Reading List?”
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Just finished an ARC of Barbara O'Neal's next - The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth - fantastic Women's Fiction. Before that, finished Cronin's The Ferryman - Sci-fi/Fantasy/Speculative Fiction. Excellent.
Now reading Wonderland - Horror
Yeah, eclectic.
Ooh. Your reading list has added to my TBR! Thanks.
I'm so jealous you got to read Barbara's ARC! I just read two of her books last month -- "The Starfish Sisters" and "Bed of Spices." Both fantastic, and so very different.
My favorite book of hers was when she wrote at Ruth Wind. It had "Midnight Rain" in the title and was soooo powerful. I've never forgotten that book, and it's been at least a dozen years since I read it.
Alice in Wonderland - amazing for some to think, that at 68, I've never read it! I'm not even sure I ever heard of it before Jefferson Starship. 🙂 What can I say? We all walk a different path. LOL
and Blindsight by Peter Watts - oh my!
Alice in Wonderland is one of my favorite books!! The whole story is just so bonkers!
I could never get on with it. I read it as a child, but was unimpressed.
I don't think I've read the actual book either! Several kid versions, but not the actual. I'll be interested to hear how you like it.
I always have at least two books going at a time. Usually, one is on the art and craft of writing and/or editing. The other alternates between fiction and nonfiction. (I go gaga over books about scientific discovery, invention, and engineering).
Currently I'm in the middle of a biography of Dorothy Parker, an icon of the literati of 100 years ago, and a curious (and big, with small type!) book about how our survival as a species depends on catagorization of everything, followed by how we make analogies between things in disparate categories (something that computers and AI cannot do).
My fiction selections often come in as gifts or loaners, mostly contemporary material, but some historical stuff. I have no interest in thrillers or horror, but will read a romance occasionally.
What I have found, invariably, is that no matter what I read, each book contains at least one gem of wisdom or insight.
I love biographies. Can't believe I haven't read one about Dorothy Parker. Thanks for sharing, Sally!
I find myself reading two, three, or more books at once, always at least a nonfiction and a novel...
Presently on the nonfiction side: Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism (Kristen Ghodsee)
On the fiction side: Middlemarch (Eliot) and also Satyricon (Patronius)
What a diverse collection of reading you have going, Matthew!
Those titles are stellar, Matthew. Happy reading!
Somehow, I've let my active reading list balloon out of control at the moment, with several craft books, reference books, and romances going at once. I'm bouncing between them all with a lack of stick, but since my pre-order for Eloisa James' second title in her Accidental Brides series, Hardly a Gentleman, just landed on my device, the minute I open it and start reading, I'll probably abandon the others until I finish it. The first book in the series was terrific.
Sounds like you found a book you'll have lots of "stick" to, Selene. Thanks for sharing.
I'm reading In Winter I Get Up at Night by Jane Urquhart. Set in Saskatchewan in the 1950s, it explores the most significant events and people in protagonist Emer's life.
Ooooh. Another book I will add to my TBR list. Thanks, Leanne!
I understand Jen when she says there are so many good books coming out. I've so many on my tablet, and then I read a review, or a friend mentions a book, and I think, 'That's one I really must read.'
I've just finished reading The Band, a horror novel by young author David Kummer. I reviewed it on Goodreads, Amazon and on my blog if you want to have a look at what I said.
Now I'm going through my books to find my next read.
"Going through my books to find my next read," sounds very familiar. LOL. Thanks for sharing VM.
I became a better writer by studying screenwriting along with other genres I wasn't writing. It's how I came to write across the genres.
Like some of you, I read several books simultaneously and across genres. I read non-fiction quickly and currently enjoy Amish romances and thrillers in fiction. Sarah Price wrote a cute Amish romance series based on fairy tale romances of Snow White, Beauty & the Beast and Jane Austen's stories.
P.S. I just finished I AM MARIA by Maria Shriver, which was a GREAT book! I had to get my own copy so I could write in it!
Love that you enjoyed I AM MARIA so much. And an Amish romance based on fairy tales and Jane Austen? I'm going to check that out.
I'm just finished How to Murder Your Employer, and am finally getting around to the Book Thief, which I *love* so far. I can't believe I let it sit on the shelf for so long. I'm working my way through the Complete Poems of Frank O'Hara. Next, I have City Poet, a biography of O'Hara, and probably At Swim, Two Boys.
Great titles. Thanks for adding to my TBR pile, Will.
Most of the time I read romance, but I also read some domestic thrillers, cozy mysteries, romantic suspense, and women's fiction.
Cool mix of genres. Thanks for sharing, Denise.
The Devil You Know. Dr Gwen Adshe
Scorpions by Tuppence Middleton
Powsels and Thrums Alan Garner - the one I read for enjoyment, definitely not the reason for reading the first two.
Fascinating titles, Esther.