I wasn't that into crime novels at all, but a friend introduced me to the work of Jim Thompson - I loved all his books.
I either like reading fun war-based sci-fi, books about the lives of chefs, or dry historical non-fiction.
I've been a fan of vampire fiction since way, way back - I loved Stephen King, Anne Rice, Peter Straub, Robert McCammon, Shirley Jackson, lots of great horror and paranormal fiction.
'The New Yorker's fiction podcast I like a lot, where they have authors pick short stories by other authors that appeared in 'The New Yorker.'
I am not a scary movie/book kind of gal.
Ghost stories and Sherlock Holmes mysteries were great. And I had a major soft spot for those 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books.
I've been a lifelong horror fan, but at the same time, I would say 90 percent of my reading is biographies and nonfiction history.
Levitt admits to having the reading interests of a tweener girl, the Twilight series and Harry Potter in particular.
I was definitely more of a movie/cartoon guy than comics, but I really do like graphic novels - I don't have the time to sit down and read Stephen King like I used to, so I find picking up 'Saga' every now and then and just diving back into it is a great way to stay reading.
We love a lot of vampire fiction - both fiction in which the vampires are enemies to be battled or stone cold foxes to be dated.
I don't tackle major global events. I don't like to read about something - an event, a cataclysm - in fiction for the sake of reading it.
I tended to be drawn to the weirder, darker stuff. Horror and sci-fi anthologies.
I teach a lot of graduate creative writing classes, and on the first day, I like to go around the room and ask everybody what's the last book you've read that you really loved. And all of the women tend to give me chick lit titles. And to me, that's sort of disappointing because it's their only exposure to fiction somehow.
I like fiction set in the South, and I'm a fan of literary westerns.
I'm terribly particular about what I read: lush writing, secondary world or seriously far-out science fiction, strong worldbuilding, dynamic characters. I need to have it all for it to work for me.
There are an awful lot of readers who won't pick up a book if they think it's got anything horrific in it, or paranormal or whatever.
I don't always want to read serious fiction. But when I read fiction that's not serious, I don't want to read brain candy. Entertain me, for God's sake.
