Prior to High School – I wasn’t a reader. I was offered a bunch of books by my reading parents, but didn’t read a whole novel from front to back until I was a Junior at good ole Dover High School.
High School – My junior year I read “A Catcher in the Rye” and went on to read everything ever written by JD Salinger. I know “Franny and Zooey” and the like is awfully cloying stuff if you read it now – but at the time it spoke to me.
College – I continued reading everything by authors who I was interested in. All of Hemmingway’s work including his early dispatches to the Toronto Star. All of F. Scott Fitzgerald, all of Saul Bellow. All Joseph Heller. All guys. Of course I was also reading whatever I had to for my courses, but in the meantime I was plowing through Vonnegut’s major works and his juvenilia as if missing a single word or turn of a phrase would leave me stunted for life.
After College/ Early work years – After I finished reading everything by Emile Zola. I let up on reading “everything” and started to pick and choose a bit more. I also got pretty lazy and started reading Historical novels like ‘Killer Angels’ and Sci-Fi more than “literature.” In fact, I can’t remember the last literary book I read. It might have been ‘Max Perkins: Editor of Genius’ by A. Scott Berg which is only literary by virtue of its subject matter.
Nowadays – I don’t read much.