Autobiographies and first-person memoirs of American women, 1600-1940
Biographies of same
American history
Garden memoirs--why and how someone created her/his garden and how it integrates with the rest of their life

Memoirs and biographies of authors, such as Sylvia Plath, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, E. Dickinson, and others.

Historical fiction if it is well-researched.

Descriptions of early English country life, e.g. "Country Journal of an Edwardian Lady", "Lark Rise to Candleford", "Cider with Rosie", etc.

European history, espec. medieval.

The odd post-modern author, such as W.G. Sebald, who defies categorization.

I also read some poetry.

History
Food
Culture
Disease
Natural disasters
People-Caused Disasters
Polar Exploration
Science
Vintage True Crime (before 1970)
Anthropology & Sociology
Forensics
Linguistics
Autobiography, Biography, MemoirsDiaries, Journals, Letters
Historical fiction
ancient through 19th-century periods
20th century (first half)
historical mysteries
novels with women as main characters
Travelogues
Vintage
some Modern
Boating and Sailing

NON FICTION

travel narratives

medieval history in any part of the world

history in general

FICTION

historical fiction (well researched, no bodice rippers)

sci fi/fantasy (less now then when I was younger but I still will buy a Neil Gaiman or Terry Pratchett book off the shelves, sight unseen)

current literature (not nec best sellers)

Mysteries are my dear love, but not horror

Historical Fiction

In desperation, cereal boxes

In fiction, I mostly prefer non-genre, but enjoy the older detective stories and the contemporary forensic ones.

Non-fiction: Art, the paranormal, science (again, especially forensics), cultural history.

Historical fiction of good quality

Mystery/crime/police procedural

Contemporary fiction (some)

History

Carolyn, cereal boxes made me laugh out loud.....I was never allowed to bring a book to the table so I have read many a cereal box!

Favorite Genres:
Spiritual Books
Memoirs
Some Mysteries.....Cozy Type
Fiction...mostly cozy type,and classics
Books about books and readers of books

I am intrigued about a thread for Memoirs and I would love to know more about those garden memoirs.

gbg

For fiction, my prefered genre is fantasy particularly the type described as "high". When I was considerably younger, I liked science fiction just as much. I still read it on occasion, but I find myself becoming skeptical and arguing with it and have to keep reminding myself that it's fantasy too.

For non-fiction, I prefer contemporary essays on political, social, and cultural issues which I mostly get from magazines, but also from the occasional book collection by authors I enjoy.

OH NO... make that another cereal box reader here... perhaps we should start a thread. LOL

On a less serious note I do enjoy
American History; both fiction and non fiction.
I drawn to the studies of Madison, Paine and Adams.

I also like to get myself lost in the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages. (B. Cornwell and E. Pargeter, sometimes Whyte)

I am on a Man Booker Mission as well. Winners and Short List. Although I don't know if that would count as genre!

Mysteries are my first love-but not graphic or hardboiled. I particularly enjoy those written in the 30s-60s by Christie, Sayers, Hayer, Carr...more cerebral than bloody.
Bios-women who shaped history-for instance, Eleanor of Aquaitaine, the Tudor Queens, Clementine Churchill, Abigail Adams, Eleanor Roosevelt.
Ceral boxes, of course, the morning newspaper. It's my table now, and I make the rules!

My favourites are similar to cindydavid's. Although I would add anthropology to the non-fiction list. It's a great background for all the sci-fi and fantasy I read.

The only genre that I tend to skip is mysteries. Oh, forgot another one. My husband reads a lot of spy/war/adventure novels and I avoid those, too.

English history, mainly 19th - 20th century: Fascinated by the political and literary figures, social life, gardens and architecture, colonial life.. I prefer memoirs, diaries, biographies, but enjoy novels from that era too.

Travel narratives and journals (especially by early botanists/explorers) but almost anything in the age of sailing/early steam.

Books on the history of gardening, and how various plants have changed history. Garden books in general, though I don't buy as many nowadays.

I enjoy mysteries occasionally...have a shelf of old favorites that I settle in with once a year or so. Nero Wolfe, P.D.James, Inspector Morse, a few others.

Rarely read contemporary fiction. Lack of time mostly. I have enjoyed recently a few semi-fictional books written by first-generation Americans about their backgrounds (China, India, VietNam) and their families adapting to life in the U.S.

If cereal manufacturers got smart, they would make their boxes more interesting ~grin ~ josh

When I listed the genres I read, I forgot that I have started reading some Sci-Fi again. (I read a tremendous amount when I was a teenager in the late 50s and early 60s.) Those of you who read it, are you familiar with the novels of Robert Charles Wilson? Very unusual and very good.

I also read some garden writing--Henry Mitchell is a favorite, as is Alan Lacy, C. Lloyd, but I hated--absolutely hated--Beverly Nichols.

friedag,

What are some of your favorite diaries, journals, and letters? Thanks for any suggestions.

janalyn, good question. There are many genres I avoid, tho in each of these I have found an exception or two (btw, please call me Cindy :)

mysteries, of the 'whodunit' variety (but I love Barbara Vine and Patrick McGrath, who write more psychological type books)

westerns (I honestly can't think of an exception here)

romance novels (I love me a good love story. But books that are written as pure romance just don't do much for me)

horror (exceptions - Frankenstien, Jekyll and Hyde)

spy/crime/detective (tho I loved Case Histories)

war books - except I loved Winds of War, The March, All Quiet on the Western Front.

anything with cute pink covers (aka chick lit, usually)

Lacey, thanks for that suggestion. Its been ages since Ive read some good recent sci fi. I'll check his out.

elliottb, oh my, I'm afraid you will think you've released a torrent once I get started. But here goes:

The Diary of "Helena Morley" by Minha Vida de Menina, translated from Portuguese by poet Elizabeth Bishop, is a favorite. The precocious adolescent diarykeeper reported three years of her family life and the goings-on in her provincial Brazilian mining town in the late 1800s. Interspersed among amusing, trenchant, and matter-of-fact -- but nevertheless fascinating -- observations of everyday life and special events, she expounded on Brazilian politics, as she understood them. Her diary name came about because she had an English grandmother.

Speaking of Elizabeth Bishop: One Art: Letters is very fine.

I have a special fondness for women's letters. I really should read more letters written by men, though; so if you have any suggestions, please post them.

I think I've read through twice now all nine volumes of the Kenneth L. Holmes-edited series, Covered Wagon Women: Diaries and Letters from the Western Trail. Those start in the 1840s and end in the 1880s. I've also enjoyed other women's letters of the American West, especially Elinore Pruitt Stewart's Letters of a Woman Homesteader.

More generally there is 800 Years of Women's Letters edited by Olga Kenyon. The variety there is astounding, to me.

I've reread Mary Chesnut's Civil War a couple of times.

Someone on another thread mentioned Polly Longworth's Austin and Mabel: The Amherst Affair & Love Letters of Austin Dickinson and Mabel Loomis Todd that I read and reread voyueristically, I'm afraid.

Just to mention a few more:
The Turkish Embassy Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Captain Ahab Had a Wife: New England Women and the Whalefishery, 1720-1870 - Lisa Norling
Diary of a Country Parson, 1758-1802 by J. Woodforde
The Wilderness Journals of Everett Ruess edit by W.L. Rusho
The Diary of George Templeton Strong by Strong, of course!
The Journal of a Disappointed Man by W.N.P. Barbellion
Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941 by William L. Shirer

Two great anthologies of bits and pieces from people's diaries:
The Assassin's Cloak: An Anthology of the World's Greatest Diarists edited by Irene Taylor and Alan Taylor
A Book of One's Own: People and Their Diaries by Thomas Mallon

I better stop!

Easily my favorite genre is science fiction and fantasy. I have been reading it since my dad gave me a paperback copy of Edgar Rice Burrough's At the Earth's Core when I was nine years old. Occasionally I read mysteries, historical novels, classics and more rarely, mainstream fiction.

I read a fair amount of nonfiction also. My usual topics are gardening, domestic architecture, health and fitness, textile arts, and a smattering of art, history or social sciences.

Funny -- I consider myself an ardent feminist, but my interests follow traditional feminine lines pretty closely.

Rosefolly

I tend to read literary fiction (all types), autobiographies and non-fiction esp about medical topics or people. I also like pioneer books.

I like disaster books and have been enjoying the other thread. I like to read about them because I know I wouldn't like to experience them in real life!!!