My Reading Profile

I was an avid, book-obsessed child, but for a while I was a book-estranged adult. As a child I read lots of the big series--Erin Hunter's Warriors, Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson verse novels, and of course Harry Potter. I liked to read the same book over and over again when I was younger, rather than branching out. Rereading gave me more insight into foreshadowing, themes, and literary devices. As a burgeoning writer myself, this was more fascinating than "discovering" new books--though my opinion on that has since radically changed.

I will read almost anything nowadays. If I open a book, I will finish it. My threshold for entertainment is very low, so if a book entertains me, I will end up giving it 5 stars on Goodreads. I'm definitely capable of critical analysis, but when I'm reading for my own amusement, if a book holds my interest and I care about the characters--BAM! That becomes a five star read for me.

I do have my favorite genres. I love the world-building in fantasy and science fiction novels and will gravitate towards those over most other genres. I love to explore new worlds and to grapple with the ethical qualms of magical items, life-extending robotics, and more--it helps me to contextualize my own existence in this world.

For the past few months, I've finally taken the plunge and read most of Sarah J. Maas' body of works in her mega-verse. I enjoyed her fantasy young adult series Throne of Glass more than I've enjoyed her A Court of Thorns and Roses series, though that's probably because I get bored during spicy scenes and much prefer the epic love confession that comes before. However, I really enjoy the characters and world she's crafted, so I will continue to read the rest of mega-verse of hers with the Crescent City books.

Some of my all time favorite books are:

• Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao. This is a young adult science fiction reimagining of the only female emperor in Chinese history. 
• Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill. Robots win the inevitable human vs. robot war, but now they find themselves running out of parts and have to face their mortality.
• Lilith's Brood by Octavia E. Butler. This is a science fiction trilogy that I read as one brick of a book. Humans have destroyed their world, but are "rescued" by a species of alien that relies on breeding itself with other species to continue its own existence.
• Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon. I got this science fiction novel through ILL at the library I work at, and I almost stopped reading it because the print edition I had used a really straining font. I can't even quantify what was so hard to read about it. However, beneath that weird font was an amazing story about an elderly woman who chooses to stay on the outpost planet she's lived on after everyone leaves rather than be put into storage. Then, she meets the indigenous population of aliens that live on the planet that had been hiding this whole time.
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. This is a classic literary fiction novel about a man who works in a home for the mentally ill. I will NOT watch the movie, though I'm sure it's amazing and award-winning and such.