in which i discuss how my reading taste has changed over the years

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Hello, fellow readers!

In this post, I wanted to discuss how different my reading taste is now compared to how it once was. I feel like it has gone through roller coasters, in which I’m just shifting between already known genres.

Please, feel free to share some of your experiences in the comments too and how you think the changes in your reading taste have mirrored your own life changes.

 

My favorites as a child

I’ve always been a reader, ever since I read my first words at the age of three. So my parents bought me a lot of books and I tried a little bit of everything as a child. (Ha, how much has changed. My parents *hate* to buy me books nowadays).

I read pretty much everything, from long series to standalones. Fantasy to contemporary. Obviously, it was all children books, but still. I think because I was trying to comprehend the world, I didn’t have many preferences, and was just consuming as much as I could until I found out what I liked and what I didn’t like.

Pippy Longstocking was my hero at the ages of five and six. When I grew slightly older, I also started to read the Beacon Street Girls’ series and I carried on with it throughout teenagehood as well, since it’s a very long one. I still have a lot of fond memories of it!

I liked to read a lot of “girly” books (I hate this definition, because honestly gender rules are so last century, but you get me) – with female protagonists, fairies and princesses -, but I also liked books centered around male characters, like Zac Power.

Surprisingly, I’ve never been a fan of comics or graphic novels. I mean, obviously I was a fan of ‘Turma da Mônica‘, which is the most popular Brazilian comic series, but that’s about it.

 

My favorites as a teenager.

When I turned nine, I think, I got a Percy Jackson & The Olympians book set for my birthday and things changed a lot. First, I devoured the series in a matter of a couple weeks and kept re-reading the books over and over again because I didn’t believe anything else would compare.

When I was eleven, social media showed up and I found out Tumblr. Through the Percy Jackson Tumblr fandom, I also found out other amazing book series. Obviously, I was reluctant to pick them up, but at some point I found out that The Hunger Games had mythology inspirations and so I gave it a shot.

It didn’t resemble Percy Jackson in the slightest, but I still loved it a lot. After that, it was all Divergent and The Maze Runner and Shadowhunters and all the fantasies and dystopians that I could get my hands on.

I completely stopped reading contemporaries and actually started looking down on them. I felt like they had simplistic writing and didn’t offer enough depth. Even when John Green was everything people could talk about, I was still protecting my fantasies with all my heart.

I think it had a lot to do with the fandom I was in. I was pretty influenced by the hype, and so I’d only read books that I had already heard praise for in social media. This hasn’t changed at all, but the fact I was following only people that had the same book taste as I did, didn’t help with my branching out.

 

My favorites now.

I don’t think there’s a specific book I can pinpoint that changed my relationship with contemporaries, but I slowly started to gravitate more towards them. It was probably around 2014, when I found out Booktube, and started getting different recommendations.

Now, contemporary is a hundred percent my favorite genre. I still like fantasy, but I’m much more picky about which series I give a chance to. Except for perhaps Six of Crows, The Raven Cycle and Rebel of the Sands, I haven’t carried on with a fantasy series in a loooong time.

Obviously, branching out in social media and following new people allowed me to branch out in my reading as well, but I find that what really made me stick with contemporaries was the fact I could relate to them. I was finally reading books that represented me a bit more. They were teenagers, going through mundane life – not saving the world or slaying dragons.

At the same time, fantasy and more dense genres became way too much of a task in the middle of my already packed high-school experience. I had a lot of work, and so when I picked up a book, I wanted it to be entertaining and fast-paced, so long books were (are) pretty much banned.

 

My reading taste has clearly changed a lot! What about yours? Which books you used to love as a kid? Let’s chat in the comments!

 

12 comentários sobre “in which i discuss how my reading taste has changed over the years

  1. Honestly, I don’t think my reading taste has changed very much. When I was a child, I read everything that was popular as well as ones that were recommended to me. I pretty much do that even now! I know a lot of people like to hate on hype, but sometimes it’s there for a good reason and i pick up books that receive a lot of praise almost all the time. But my favorite genre is actually fantasy! I never had a favorite genre as a kid (I feel like I liked pretty much everything I read), so I don’t think I could say that my favorite genre has changed :)

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    • Ha, I totally relate about following hype sometimes. I am not able to buy new releases, though, so I’m constantly behind, but I only pick up books that I’ve heard good comments about and I hardly ever go for more indie, underground content. I’m pretty mainstream like that, hahah.
      Thanks for the comment, Caitlin! 💛

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  2. I don’t think my reading taste has changed much over the years. I remember liking stories about historical figures when I was younger. Something that I haven’t read in a while. Granted the children versions of those stories are straight to the point with less nuance involved I guess, so they aren’t really the same thing.
    Your point about parents reminded me of my own experience. As a kid, my parents would buy me a ton of books to encourage me to read. By the time I was a teenager, they had to confiscate my books to make sure I was studying. Haha. I would borrow books from friends and hide it under my bed and sneak it out during the night to read by the table lamp.
    I’ve always loved fantasy and I still do. The bigger the better. I like having books and worlds to really sink my teeth into. I read thrillers and contemporaries from time to time, but I still regard fantasy as my true love. Actually, it’s been a while since I last read a thriller.

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    • I did also love reading about historical figures when I was younger! My dad is a big fan of history, and he didn’t get the chance to learn a lot in school, so he literally self-taught himself most things and then passed it onto me. I haven’t read historical fiction in a looooong time, but it was definitely a favorite genre of mine as a kid too!
      I think it’s so nice that you really would hide books, out of all things! I can imagine kids hiding videogames from their parents, but not books, hahah. That’s so funny!
      Thank you so much for your comment, Jamie! 😊

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  3. I love this post so much! I feel like we have similar journeys when it comes to reading contemporaries – I never looked down on them like you did at one point, but I did read a lot more fantasy books when I was younger and an early teenager, then I fell in love with contemporaries and… well look at me now haha, they’re my favorite kind of books ever. I’ve gone through a long period when I read A LOT of contemporaries afterwards, discovering my love for them, and it’s only when I started blogging that I got back into fantasy a lot, too :)
    Wonderful post! :D

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    • Hahah, that’s so nice! Contemporaries really are my favorites now, but I also agree that blogging has got me back into fantasy a little bit as well. I follow a lot of bloggers who love fantasy, so I’m constantly getting tons of recommendations. Not all of them interest me, but I for sure get hyped thanks to all the amazing bloggers who are constantly sharing their love for fantasy, hahah.
      Thank you so much for your comment, Marie! ❣️

      Curtir

  4. Yes I definitely think my reading tastes have changed over time. I think even in terms of the same genre. I feel like when I was younger I would have enjoyed books much more easily but now I am more likely to spot things I don’t like and ways the story could improve for me. I don’t know if getting into writing or having read more books that made this happen but I look for different things now
    .
    And when I was younger I used to always and only read more with animals in really— I loved animals so I got books by Anna Wilson and others where a young girl got a pet and so on. I loved them. But then I got into fantasy and haven’t really looked back haha. But I think BookTube (like you said) and book blogging has diversified the genres I want to read so I am interested to see if I will get a new favourite genre in the future.
    Great post!! :-)

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    • I totally agree with what you said about getting into writing made you a more critical reader. I realize that when reading reviews of people who are also writers, they’re able to point out a lot of things about pacing, plot and character arcs that I didn’t notice before! I think getting to know the process behind a novel really puts things in a new perspective.
      That’s so cute that you read a lot of books with animals! I did love Narnia – but does it really count? Hahah.
      Thank you so much for your comment! 😌

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  5. I love this post, Lais! I definitely relate — Percy Jackson was more a part of my (late) childhood rather than my teen years but it was such a big part of my life!! And I used to love both fantasy and realistic fiction when I was younger (leaning more towards fantasy), but then I went through a contemporary-hating phase before returning to it again! Contemporaries are definitely a lot easier for me to read and I 100% relate to reading more of them than fantasy during the school year 😅

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    • Thanks, May!
      I think my contemporary-hating phase had a lot to do with the hype around John Green and other authors like that. I just didn’t want to follow the hype, so I never picked them up, but I’m pretty sure I’d like them now!
      School takes so much of my time and my two brain cells are too exhausted after a day to also try to understand fantasy worlds and political intrigues. I’m so glad contemporary exist to make me feel less burn out, hahah.
      Thank you so much for the comment, May! 💛

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