I like to read anything. When I was younger my Grandparents would joke that I would read the backs of cereal packets if there was nothing else to hand. Even now I always have a book on the go either on my phone, Nook or a plain old fashioned paperback. I read whilst sitting at home, in the bath, in bed, in hospital waiting rooms and on my breaks at work. The only place I am unable to read is in the car. I get terribly car sick and reading makes it worse, which is a shame as I spend a lot of time in cars and for me that is wasted reading time!
My favourite books are women's fiction. I love the authors Jill Mansell, Katie Fforde, Milly Johnson, Jane Costello, Sophie Kinsella, Lucy Diamond and new authors Lucy Holliday and Heidi Swain. I also enjoy crime thrillers and read novels by Tess Gerritsen & M J Arlidge. I also like revisiting Enid Blyton and Beatrix Potter and reading Non-Fiction books about the war and the Royal Family.
I will give any book a go and will happily admit to enjoying so called "chick lit" which is sometimes described as light and fluffy.
Now I am writing my first novel. It falls into this so called light and fluffy category, but I would describe it as a romantic comedy. It is hard going and anything but light and fluffy to write. That is why I have a bee in my bonnet about Book Snobs. The kind of people who if you haven't heard of the obscure Latvian author they are talking about look at you as if you have murdered their cat!
If you enjoy heavy going books then that's fantastic, if you like nothing better then curling up in bed with a copy of War and Peace then that's brilliant, if you can quote me passages from Shakespeare then that is wonderful too, but don't look down your nose at me if I ask you if you have read Shopaholic and Sister or The Magic Faraway Tree.
On my last writing class we were discussing books we had read and authors we liked. One gentleman said he enjoyed the works of Evelyn Waugh. Another lady said she hadn't read any of her books, which was met with laughter by the gentleman. Evelyn Waugh for those of you who don't know is in fact Arthur Evelyn Waugh and he wrote Brideshead Revisited. Now I knew who he was, but this lady didn't and she was mortified that she had embarrassed herself. I told her I had been in a similar situation at college with George Eliot who is of course Mary Ann Evans. It's an easy mistake to make. Many people were surprised when PD James passed away to discover that PD stood for Phyllis Dorothy and that she was female. Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte published their first works under the names of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. More recently JK Rowling published under the name of Robert Galbraith. It's no wonder people get confused!
What I am trying to say is that it matters not a jot what you read, just as long as you do. Us aspiring authors need people to read all sorts of books. If everyone liked the same thing the world would be an extremely boring place and we would have nothing to talk about.
So read everything, pick up your children's books and read them (I love Little Grey Rabbit books and there are loads at my local Doctors surgery), use your local library and pick an author you wouldn't usually pick, borrow books from friends (but remember to look after them). If you don't enjoy it, what have you lost? Nothing, but you might love it and then you have another set of books to devour. Heaven!
