Have your book-tastes changed over the years? More fiction? Less? Books that are darker and more serious? Lighter and more frivolous? Challenging? Easy? How-to books over novels? Mysteries over Romance?
Well, there was a definite change in my tastes between 1985 and 1990...
Hmm. I suppose I'd be better qualified to answer this question in a few decades' time, since I'm only twenty-two, and haven't really had time to alter my reading patterns since I started reading 'grown-up books'. Those started to appear on my horizon when I was about thirteen - up unto that point I'd gone from Enid Blyton to Goosebumps to Point Horror, with only some dips into Agatha Christie which could really count as more mature material. That's an interesting development in my reading, actually - I certainly couldn't cope with horror now, unless it's heavily tempered by exaggerated Gothic aspects, such as Shirley Jackson's novels.
So, interwar domestic literature became my reading choice of choice, and to a large extent it still is. I suppose my reading trends have mostly developed into being more widespread, because of a far-reaching English degree, and latterly all the review books I read. If it were up to me, I probably wouldn't read so many modern books - but I don't get sent much by authors writing in the 1930s, funnily enough! I try and dabble in more foreign works now, and more non-fiction (though still almost always connected with literature in some way). So perhaps I'm in the midst of a widening phase, and will settle with some favourites in a few years' time. I wouldn't like to spend the rest of my reading life trying out new things all the time - it would be like always trying to find a comfortable chair, and never buying one. By all means, dip toes in lots of pies (to mix metaphors in a rather unhygenic way), but I need a comfort zone to which to retreat. Or, rather, quality guaranteed.
Over to you...
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