What's in your stack of books?

My theory is that all writers love to read. I know this is true for me. I seem to always have a stack of books from our nearby library waiting at the ready for me to pick one and start the adventure that waits inside the pages. I love the library system in North Carolina which allows one to borrow books from any library in the state (though I have been told that the city of Greensboro is not part of this system. Can anyone from Greensboro tell me why?) I keep a digital list with my local library of books I would like to check out and when one becomes available it arrives in Asheville and I get an email to come and pick it up.

Sometimes a number of books arrive simultaneously off my “HOLDS” and I have more to read than I can handle. And sometimes I wait and wait and wait as everyone else in the state seems to want to read the same books I want to read. Still, it is a great system and I love our library.

My husband is an avid mystery reader. That has never been my favorite though I do read an occasional mystery. I realize that my favorite genre right now is non-fiction.

Right now I have Joy-Ann Reid’s Medgar & Myrlie started and waiting for me to finish this blog post so I can keep reading. I thought Liz Cheney’s Oath and Honor was both insightful and depressing. In my awaiting stack right now I also have Mary Roach’s latest book Fuzz which is about when animals break the law—like a jaywalking moose or the chapter on gulls that swooped down on St. Peter’s at the Vatican. That chapter has a great opening line: “If you make a gull sufficiently nervous, it will vomit.”

In my stack I also have a book about wild turkeys, Illumination in the Flatwoods, and one about an inner city animal hospital, The Vet at Noah’s Ark.

I am also slowly savoring Jami Attenberg’s 1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round. I enjoy her Substack blog, CRAFT TALK, too.

I do sometimes read fiction (I loved Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake and I am excited to read Fire Keeper’s Daughter) but those titles often get shuffled to the bottom of my stack. It hasn’t always been this way but it seems for the past few years I am drawn more to non-fiction than fiction. I do love graphic novels and recently read two of Raina Telgemeier’s books, Smile and then Guts, both written for a younger audience than me but highly enjoyable.

So you may be thinking that I love book clubs. Well, I would love to love a book club but that has never really worked for me. Many years ago a friend invited me to her book club and I was so excited but when I went to the first meeting and the club rules were shared. I discovered that each person in the club had to commit to reading one book each year and then doing a book report on that book for the club. One book. Hmmmm…that just wasn’t a good fit for me. I wanted us all to read at least one book every month. When I expressed that suggestion to the members, they looked at me in horror and several said they could not possibly read one book every month. I soon discovered it was more a dessert club than a book club. The desserts were divine but the book club was not my cup of tea.

I have friends (and family) who are in book clubs that sound like loads of fun and I always pay attention when they share what they are reading, but their clubs are not close enough for me to crash and beg to be a member (“I’ll even bring a bottle of wine!!”) so I remain a book lover without a club. Which is probably just fine because I think I love reading more than I love clubbing.

I am grateful to have friends who are avid readers so that we can share what we have recently read and are reading and I can make notes to put them on my HOLDS list at the library. I am super grateful for friends and family who still buy books and pass them on to me. The Covenant of Water is waiting for me on my bookshelf thanks to my daughter’s generosity, so when I start to crave a good fiction read I am prepared!

So you are getting a short blog post today as I have this stack of books calling my name and it is a grey, rainy day, so perfect for curling up with a good read.

But I would love to know what YOU are reading—non-fiction, fiction, poetry, all categories. Please share!