Let’s Talk: Books That Define My Reading Taste

Hi friends! A little while ago, I saw someone I follow on Bookstagram (readbycait – feel free to come and say hi!) made a post where they shared books that they felt defined their reading taste. I thought that was such a fun idea, so I wanted to try my hand at it!

My birthday was on Tuesday, so as I’ve now entered a new year of my life, I figured this would be the perfect time to do a post like that! Grab your favorite beverage, get cozy and let’s chat about the books that I think define my reading taste.

When trying to figure out how I wanted to structure this post, I started thinking about what my favorite (or really beloved) books have in common and came up with a few different categories to put them under.

Shakespeare & Influenced/Inspired by Shakespeare

Who would I be if not for Shakespeare? Truly, it’s a question that I don’t want to know the answer to. While I knew the basics of many Shakespeare stories as a kid, I didn’t actually read Shakespeare until my freshman year of high school, and oh wow, did it change things for me. I remember a lot of my friends being confused by the language at first (totally valid!) but something about it spoke to me right away. The language and artistry jumped out at me, and I’ve been obsessed ever since. 

I love so many of Shakespeare’s plays, but my favorites (and therefore the ones I would say really define my reading taste) are definitely Romeo and Juliet (you can read my annotate with me post on R&J here), Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night. I think all four of those plays really display the things that Shakespeare did best; social commentary, grief and trauma, complicated family dynamics, and fantastical situations with real human characters. 

Since I love Shakespeare so much, I love checking out any sort of Shakespeare retelling or book inspired by Shakespeare. They don’t always work for me, but I do love seeing how authors interpret his works since the themes are so universal. If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio (you’re all shocked, I’ve never talked about IWWV EVER — also here’s my annotate with me post), That Way Madness Lies edited by Dahlia Adler (a short story collection of retellings and imaginings with a focus on diversity — my review), Enter the Body by Joy McCullough (a retelling/reimagining of Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and King Lear from the perspective of the young women in those stories — my review) and These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong (Romeo and Juliet retelling set in 1920s Shanghai — my review) are some of my absolute favorites.

Classics with Strong Female Characters

We all know that I am a classics girlie. I feel like there’s a weird misconception that classics don’t and can’t have strong female characters, but I would definitely disagree. In fact, I think that my favorite classics feature some of the strongest female characters in literature. There’s not one definition of strength, and I think that the women in these stories show strength in different ways. 

Something else that my favorite classics, Emma by Jane Austen, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (part 1, part 2, part 3 of my annotate with me series), Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, and Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, all have in common is that I read them at very informative times of my life. 

I grew up watching and reading Anne of Green Gables and Little Women, so Anne Shirley and Jo and Amy March (and Beth and Meg, but more so Jo and Amy) were such huge parts of my childhood and really taught me valuable lessons as a young girl. All three of girls were loudly and unapologetically themselves, Anne and Amy were able to see the beauty in everything and everyone even during the hard things life threw at them, and Jo and Anne have a beautiful determination and always went after the things they wanted — all of these things (and everything else they represent) really are so important to learn as a young girl, and the three of them heavily influenced me at a young age.

In my early teen years I read Emma and Les Mis for the first time and these two books definitely were turning points for me. To some, Emma is an “unlikable” character, but I absolutely love her. She is flawed and that makes her all the more real. Emma taught me that it’s important to know your worth — reading “I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other” was revolutionary and taught me just that, I should never settle for less than I deserve. 

Then there’s Les Mis and honestly, this book just changed the entire trajectory of my life. Right away, I fell in love with Fantine, Éponine and Cosette and the different types of strength that they represent throughout the story. From Fantine, who sacrificed everything she had (including her life) to provide for her child, ensuring she would have a better life than the one Fantine was living; to Éponine, who was dealt a truly horrible hand in life and had no one to love or support her, and could’ve easily ended up just like her parents, but fought to be a better person and in the end sacrificed herself to save someone to loved, who did not return her feelings; to Cosette, who even though she was shown unkindness and true evil in her childhood, grew up to be a kind and generous young woman, who never had a horrible thing to say about anyone, including her abusers. 

All of these women mentioned above are incredibly strong and I think anyone who says classics “don’t have strong female characters” have been reading the wrong classics, because the ones I read are full of them.

Murder Mysteries with Some Sort of Mixed Media Element

I’m sure you’re all absolutely shocked to hear me say that the mystery/thriller genre is my favorite (jk jk y’all know my feelings about the mystery/thriller genre) and therefore I read a lot of the genre. There are a ton of mystery/thrillers that I would say I really enjoyed or loved and would highly recommend, but as I’ve continued to read the genre I’ve started to get a little more specific about what the book needs to do to become a favorite. What I’ve discovered is that if there is some sort of mixed media element it’ll most likely become a favorite.

It doesn’t matter if it’s YA or adult (I actually tend to like YA mystery/thrillers more than adult ones, but that’s a different conversation for a different time), I just really love mixed media mysteries. I think it’s a great medium to propel the story forward, especially since you can cover a lot of ground with an article, interview, etc. And let’s be real, mixed media elements also make reading physically even more fun! My all-time favorite is without a double the A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder series by Holly Jackson (my review for the third book in the series, As Good As Dead), and I also love the Truly Devious series by Maureen Johnson (my reviews of A Box in the Woods and Nine Liars). Some recent mixed media mystery/thriller favorites are Murder in the Family by Cara Hunter (I would say that this one is probably the best example of a mixed media story, and I was literally creating a digital crime board while reading it — my review) and The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett (I definitely recommend all of her books if you want mixed media mysteries!).

Contemporary Romance that Explores Grief

I love a good fluffy romance as much as the next person, but my favorite type of romance are the ones that make you swoon over the main couple one chapter, and then the next you’re crying because the main character has had a huge moment of growth and realization that, more likely than not, involves dealing with grief in some sort of way. 

I think that exploring our grief is so important because really, we’re always grieving something; the loss of a loved one, past friendships, moments we wish we could relive — to exist is to grieve and I love watching a character grow and process their grief and come out the other side feeling seen and settled really hits for me. There are lots of books that do this well, but the ones that really stick with me (and I would consider some of the best) are Beach Read and Book Lovers by Emily Henry and a new favorite, The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston.

Magical Realism

It took me a long time to admit that I just am not a high fantasy girl. I spent years trying to read all the big high fantasy books, and wanted to like them but they just didn’t work for me. It’s not that I don’t like high fantasy as I love it in films, I just don’t love reading high fantasy, which seems to be the general favorite of the online book community, and since that’s all I really saw, I thought that the genre wasn’t for me. However, over the last few years, I started checking out more low fantasy/magical realism books and it all clicked for me. That’s the kind of fantasy I want to read! Let me tell you, it was such a joy to find a type of fantasy that I like to read, because truthfully, I found it really disheartening that I couldn’t connect with fantasy on page as much as I can on screen.

Cossette and I actually talked about this a little while ago, and she was saying that for both of us, our jobs demand so much of our time and brain power, that high fantasy can sometimes just feel like too much work for our brains after a long work day/week, and she’s absolutely correct. That’s not to say that I don’t use a lot of brain power when I’m reading a mystery (because I do, you know I love trying to solve it before everyone else), but it’s definitely a different type of energy than keeping track of fantastical realms and complicated magic systems.

I love small town vibes, and those vibes definitely lend themselves to magical realism like in Spells For Forgetting by Adrienne Young (this also has a mystery element, so like, this really was meant for me) and The Nature of Witches by Rachel Griffin. I would also love to read more magical realism with an academic setting like If You Could See the Sun by Ann Liang, as that was such a cool premise. I’ve discovered quite a few magical realism novels that I’ve really enjoyed and loved in the last few years, and I’m looking forward to finding even more!

Phew! That was actually a LOT of books (and I cut it down from what it originally was) — there are some books that I would include, but fall under St. Martin’s Press and I am doing my best to fully participate in the St. Martin’s Press boycott, which you can read more about here.

I had a lot of fun working on this post, and I hope that it gave you a bit more insight into my reading tastes and some of the books that I hold very close to my heart.

Tell me about some of the books that you think define your reading tastes in the comments! Until next time 💜