by Joelle Steele

As a writer, I am often asked what I like to read. That’s a tough question for me, because I read one or two books a week, I have very wide and eclectic interests, and I read both fiction and non-fiction. I have an incredibly long list of books I want to read, and that list keeps on growing.

I currently have about 180 ebooks on the Nook and Kindle apps on my tablet, and I also have a about 150 books that I found online that are in the public domain in epub format (the most widely used ebook format in the world). I try to read at least one every week. I also borrow almost weekly from the library. I rarely read all the works of a single author. I usually gravitate towards individual books that I’ve heard about or that were recommended to me.

In fiction, I enjoy novels that are mysteries, ghost stories, science fiction, and historic fiction. I do deviate from those genres from time to time. I read novels from all eras, many of which are rather obscure, usually out of print, and hard to get. But, no matter where I’ve lived, my local libraries have always managed to find those titles for me through interlibrary loans. (My late friend Jill calls me the “queen of interlibrary loans.”)

I get bored very easily, so I almost never read more than three novels in a series, and I no longer read horror or fantasy. I find that many of today’s books are very formulaic with unoriginal or poorly-developed characters and plot lines. I guess I’m super picky or super snobby.

In nonfiction, I read history, especially about ancient cultures, Egypt in particular. I also read about architecture and archaeology; art and music; biographies and letters of artists, musicians, and writers (past and present); social customs and everyday living from all eras; and very old travel books about what tourist destinations used to be like in days long gone. I also read books about how to do things better, improve your life/health/work, etc.

Because I do a lot of research for my own books, I frequently find myself reading an awful lot of books about subjects that I would otherwise never even think about but need to learn for my novels, such as the San Joaquim area of France for “Buried in the Peat”; farming in the 1920s for “Spider in the Attic”; mirror-making in the early 18th century for “Reflections”; schizophrenia for “Delusions”; ghost hunting for “Shades”; and for some novels in progress: the Deep and Dark Webs, how to disappear, 19th century train travel, and oddities and anomalies of the human body.