Reading Habits

So, my reading habits have basically done a 180 when compared with what they were before college. I've sort of flip flopped in a number of ways, like my policy about finishing books (I used to think it didn't count unless I had, and if I didn't finish a book the first time I would need to restart it as often as necessary until I had. Now I realize I don't have that kind of time, especially if the book is stupid. This is why I ditched Maia when I left Ella's place a few days ago... I had planned to finish it and then leave it on a train for some unsuspecting Puritan to find and get the vapors from, but I checked with Ella -- "Does it get any better?" "No." "Does it get any less misogynist?" "No." "Sex scenes get any less distasteful?" "No." "Is there any reason to read the last 400 pages?" "Not a one." -- and decided that my time is better spent reading other things. Admittedly this switch came less from college and more from last summer, when I read -- and finished, because I had nothing else to read -- a book so vile that I have the urge to deface it with graffiti every time I see it in a bookstore. You know, open it up, surreptitiously write "This book sucks. The author is an idiot. Read it at your own peril." and only a fear of being caught and having to buy the book stops me), and my policy of fiction versus nonfiction. Only my policy of rereading has remained more or less the same.

Right, believe it or not, all that was actually a sidebar. What I noticed today was a sort of ... odd turn my reading has taken. It's been building up for awhile that I'm simply enjoying nonfiction more than fiction recently -- the stuff that was amusingly labeled "faction" in the bookstore I was in today -- and although it disturbs me a little that I seem to be drawn to the really popular bestseller type nonfiction (except biographies; I generally hate biographies) it doesn't disturb me nearly so much as the trend the subject matter is taking. Basically, I think I'm reading books that give me context and justification for my education.

The two non-fiction books I've bought most recently and have been reading most commonly are Civilization: A New History of the Western World, by Roger Osborne, and A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson. Both of them are that sort of popular, fairly easily readable type of nonfiction -- Osborne's book is just what it says, a history of culture and cultural influences from Ancient Greece up till now, and Bill Bryson's is a sort of history/summary of scientific discoveries in all kinds of areas and anecdotes about the people who made them. But they're both essentially summaries, justifications, and contexts for all the shit I just spent four years studying. The first being a justification of seminar, obviously, and the second, most of my lab and math curriculum. Also, the book I spent something like three hours devouring in a Killarney bookstore this afternoon is called Misogyny and is billed as a short history of humanity's oldest prejudice, again covering ancient Greek and Judaic texts up through twentieth century history. A couple things, in the Greek section at least, were a little overblown, a couple things from the philosophers in all the sections were kind of generalized, but in general it was really good and had me kind of writhing on the floor and almost crying in places. But it, too, highlights something I've been trying to come to terms with, namely being a woman and having the educational background that I have.

(Okay, I'm also reading more recent histories -- my own copy of Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and in bookstores, Gaddes's The Cold War. But I'm spending much, much more time on the others.)

Is this normal? I find it kind of disturbing on two sort of contradictory levels. For one, I'm sort of annoyed that I need the context; I thought that's what college was supposed to have given me. And after having spent four years on this stuff, sometimes almost killing my mental health over it, why do I almost immediately go back to the pop-cult version of it, less than I year after I graduate? Can't I find a new interest, or at least some sort of more advanced version of this interest? Do I have the academic's version of Stockholm Syndrome?

Are other graduates doing this? Can anyone give me a good reason for it? I really want it to be okay, because I'm really enjoying the books and I feel like I'm learning stuff, but looking at it empirically it just looks really odd. Or maybe I'm just feeling very self-doubting after that history of misogyny book.