My work as a journal editor involved hours of intense scientific reading every day, and my insatiable interest in biology meant that my recreational reading was almost exclusively about science. But I could remember how much I loved stories as a kid: Tom Sawyer, The Black Stallion, all the Roald Dahl things. I read almost no fiction at all as a high schooler, then as a young Christian adult I read The Lord of the Rings trilogy and (urp) the Chronicles of Narnia. As a dad, I read (aloud with the family) all of the Harry Potter books, and that was great memorable fun. Somehow about 15 years ago I decided to read The Poisonwood Bible. (Unforgettable.) But my extensive reading habits were largely focused on science and Shakespeare.
To be sure, I derive both enjoyment and inspiration from science and from Shakespeare, but in retrospect it seems I needed to feed a part of me that finds inspiration in stories. In novels. And so I started collecting novels, specifically from female authors. I put a few on my Christmas list, and my loved ones obliged, and there they were on my shelves. Unread.
Then for some reason, not even two years ago, I decided to do it. I had a trip coming up: my annual journey to New York to co-lead the Scientific Writing Retreat at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. We had moved to Arizona, so the journey had evolved from a 4-hour ride on Amtrak to an all-day trip across the continent. I don't remember why, but I picked The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix Harrow, and started reading on the plane.
Now, I think I got lucky because that's a great novel and Alix Harrow is now one of my favorite authors. I loved the book, yay, but that's not the whole story. Because I noticed that I particularly liked the fantastical and supernatural in the story. I wondered if that was just because it's a good book, so I decided to mix things up and read other female novelists. Over the following several months, I read:
Those are all excellent novels, and I recommend all of them. They have little in common other than the fact that they are all novels written by women. But I discovered I have a strong preference. The last two made a much stronger impression than the first three. In fact, I re-read the last chapter of Plain Bad Heroines three times.
What those last two novels have in common is fantasy. They both contain supernatural stuff.
This actually surprised me, being a scientist and an atheist and all. At first I thought it meant that because I deconverted from Christianity several years ago, I had some kind of vacuum I needed to fill with supernatural stuff. But I think that's probably wrong, or at least woefully incomplete. I think it's simpler than that: I like stories of inspiration that are willing to break the rules, to use magic or mystery or whatever to go places that we're not usually allowed to go. I'm rebel scum, always have been, and after all, I loved Harry Potter long before I woke up from Christianity.
Knowing this about myself, I'm now steering myself toward the fantasy/sci-fi genre, something I would have found surprising just a few years ago. I recently finished the first three books in the Locked Tomb series and count Harrow The Ninth among my all-time favorites. I'm currently reading Hester, which has some nice fantasy seasoning, and I have The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet waiting next.
It took a few decades, but now I know. See more about my reading in my What I'm Reading series or at my Bookwyrm profile.
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