Picking and choosing through the list mail here. I may qualify as a reader. Often I multi-read. I will go to the library and stock up for the weekend and end up with books that I can't decide which one to read first, so I will read one and flip to the other as the mood dictates. Where some people can use their weekends to spend the entire two days focusing on some set of chores, I can easily spend the entire time sitting on my couch reading. When I read, I lose myself entirely in the book, transporting myself smack dab into it. Like the answers so far, I enjoy the Patricia Cromwell novels and although I liked "Black Notice," I agree with Colin about the out-of-character ending. Beyond that, it's suffice to say that I'm a reading junkie. If the blurb catches my eye, I'll take it out of the library and read it. Right now, I just finished a historical novel; "The Autobiography of Henry VIII," a genre of writing that I usually skip. This book was quite well written and researched. "Galileo's Daughter" is waiting in the wings. I'm also an avid re-reader and am always searching out books of my childhood. One of the best books I read when I was 14 was "The Cheerleader" by Ruth Doan MacDougall. Although set in a late 1950's small town, it expertly captured the confusion of growing up, especially for a girl. I just found it again and remained so impressed with it that I went back and bought another one for my boyfriend's 15 year old daughter. Joseph P. Lasch's biographies are usually excellent, Volumes I and II of Blanche Cook's biography of Eleanor Roosevelt rocks and I'm always coming back to and re-reading Jane Alpert's autobiography: "Growing up Underground," not so much because the writing is great, but because it deftly captures the dangerous pull of rhetorical thinking versus a solid sense of self. Laugh if you will, but I also love Jackie Sussan's "Valley of the Dolls," and "Once is Never Enough." The writing is pedestrian, but it is fun and many of the characters are nicely captured. Having said that, I am also a sucker for old Mad magazines and usually do a quick speed read of stupid celebrity "as told to's" while I am browsing through the library stacks. MG
