By Valerie Taylor

Author of What’s Not Said (She Writes Press, 2020) and What’s Not True (She Writes Press, August 2021)

 It’s safe to say that most authors read a ton of books. The definition of a ton for one, though, may be different for another. 

For example, before I retired in 2016, my career as a marketing and communications professional was my priority. As such, I was satisfied if I read a book a month. Thinking back to those working years, there was probably a fifty-fifty split between fiction and non-fiction, with most of the books selected by a book club discussion group I attended nine months out of the year.

 Not surprisingly, my life has changed since retiring. I’ve replaced the daily corporate grind with a 24/7 author life. You’d think writing would be all consuming, leaving little time to bury my head in a book. Actually, the opposite has happened.  

 Over the past few years, I started tracking the books I read on Goodreads. It appears I’m now reading more than three times as many books annually than I did during my working years. A quick scan revealed that just ten percent are non-fiction, three percent are memoirs, leaving a whopping 87% novels. Within fiction, there’s a range of historical, thriller, mystery, and women’s. I do try to read at least one classic each year, such as Jane Eyre, The Old Man and the Sea, The Great Gatsby, Fahrenheit 451, to name a few.

 What drove this major shift in my reading habits?

 Several life events. First, I’m now a professional book reviewer for BookTrib.com, and they provide me with titles to read. Second, I belong to four book clubs, so there’s those books. Honestly, I’m thrilled when a club decides to read a book I’ve already sunk my teeth into. Takes some pressure off! Often I just have to scan that book, or Google it to refresh my memory. Though occasionally, I’ll re-read a monthly selection. Such was the case this past year with Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell and Circe by Madeline Miller. Both are worth a repeat read.

 What am I reading now? Well, I have an itch to write a cozy mystery. So, I’m studying the genre, watching Murder, She Wrote, and reading Agatha Christie’s The Body in the Library, which was published 80 years ago!

 Bottom line. Writers must read. It’s in our DNA, our lifeblood. Reading books, in our genre and outside of it, provides us with essential nutrients. Each book we embrace sharpens the saw, making us better at our craft. We learn, we refresh, we apply. And, hopefully, in the end our ability to balance our love of books with our love of creating stories will benefit readers forever. A dream come true.

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