Age Appropriate Reading: Booking Through Thursday 5/12/11

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This week's question is: Do you read books “meant” for other age groups? Adult books when you were a child; Young-Adult books now that you’re grown; Picture books just for kicks … You know … books not “meant” for you. Or do you pretty much stick to what’s written for people your age?

I read to suit my mood and tastes.  As a book reviewer, I read books for all age groups, from young children's books to adult and all in between. For my personal enjoyment, however, I read adult books with the odd exception of a YA novel. Case in point, I've read and re-read the Harry Potter and Twilight books. Those are my favourite YA reads to date. My adult preferences include anything by John Grisham, Carolyn Hart, Agatha Christie, Michael Crichton, Nicholas Sparks, Richard Paul Evans, Laura Lippman, to name a few.  I like to read the works of debuting authors as well. Shilpi Somaya Gowda's Secret Daughter is my favourite read of 2011. If you haven't yet read this amazing novel, you simply must! (I should be on the PR team for all the gushing I've done about this masterpiece!! ;))

As a child, I often read books that were "old" for me. For instance, in grade four I had read an adult/YA novel called Midnight by Rutherford Montgomery (a horse story, of course) and loved it so much that I coerced my teacher into reading it aloud for our in-class reading time. She did so but it didn't keep the others' attention so she quickly ditched it saying they weren't ready for a book that was written for an adult audience. Not that it contains "adult" content, but that the style of writing and the verbage was beyond their comprehension level. I did read a lot of age appropriate novels then too. Especially anything written by Marguerite Henry. She wrote horse stories, mostly, and I love horses, so it was a natural pairing. From childhood, though, my favourite book was Black Beauty by Anna Sewell.  I enjoyed, also, the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series, especially since, at the time, there was a regular tv program based on the two series. 

In my teenage years I read a bit of Stephen King with Firestarter being my favourite of his works.  I tried Harlequin romance but quickly got bored with it as it seemed to be the same story repeated again and again, only with different characters.

The best enjoyment comes from reading that which you find satisfaction from.  I like to branch out into different genres, including business books occasionally, to broaden my horizons.  I still have those favourite genres that I will return to time and again because that's what brings gratification.  And you, dear reader, do you read beyond your age?  Do you go back and re-read childhood/YA favourites?  Or, do you stick with age appropriate reading?  Please take a moment to leave a comment.  I'd love to know what you have to say.