I hope the reading you do in your field provides you with books you genuinely enjoy. If I had to narrow my scope to a single subject, even one as wide-ranging as architecture, I'd get incredibly restless and eventually rebel. This used to be a challenge in school when I was supposed to be concentrating on supplemental reading for classes and instead flipped into overdrive and went on mad poetry-reading binges, the likes of which I've never repeated. (I still read poetry; I just don't binge as if my life depended on it.)
As for favorites - oh yes, I have them, but favorites always come in plurals. And categories. Aesthetic vs. sentimental, for instance. So I have books I'm passionate about, books I re-read and recommend and books that represent certain periods of my life.
I may have to try this meme when I'm a little more coherent and not about to nod off over my keyboard.
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zvi and
no subject
Date: 2017-07-15 08:57 am (UTC)A cultural history of Christmas is a marvelous premise for a book! I admit, for nonfiction I do tend to hold out for a persuasive, anecdotal, and moderately witty style, but I can be lured in by the promise of incisive analysis or oddball, overstuffed, knick-knacky, sumptuous erudition. I love learnéd writers who have attics for brains where all the handwritten diaries, beaded gowns, taxidermied lapdogs, bills of lading, family bibles, property deeds, corn husk dolls, and other such evidence are piled up and treated as a playground for intellectual curiosity.
As for favorites - oh yes, I have them, but favorites always come in plurals. And categories. Aesthetic vs. sentimental, for instance. So I have books I'm passionate about, books I re-read and recommend and books that represent certain periods of my life.
I may have to try this meme when I'm a little more coherent and not about to nod off over my keyboard.