Dear Fellow Journalers,
Does what you read “for pleasure” tell you something about your personality? Oscar Wilde once wrote “It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines who you will be when you can’t help it”. In essence, I think, we seek specific reading content that reflects our identities and views. There was a study that examined the connection between personality and people’s favorite books. It was based on the Big 5 Personality Traits:
Openess (those people who are creative, imaginative, curious and adventurous) Those people tended to read books that stimulated their intelligence and mostly read non-fiction, art books and some classics.
Conscientiousness (those people who were thoughtful, organized, goal-orientated) Those people tended to read religious, and books in their career field.
Extroverts (those people who were sociable, expressive, talkative, outgoing.) Those people read books about relationships, memories and autobiographies.
Agreeableness ( those people who were kind, trusting, cooperative) Agreeable people read mostly books about relationships, faith-based and family drama.
Neuroticism (Neurotic people tended to have mood swings, lots of anxiety issues and are stressed a lot of the time. These people read to escape their lives so sci-fi books are high on their agenda.
In my view our tastes in books change over time like our lives. When I was young I loved to read adventure stories. As a teenager, I read all the Nancy Drew books and of course, “The Little House” books. I was introduced to “Black Beauty by my Grandmother and so began my “love affair with horses and western. I admit freely that I liked most of “the required reading”books of high school and college (“Rebecca” and Tale of Two Cities” to name a couple).
If you take a look at The Good Reads column on the right side of my posts you will see a partial lit of what I m currently reading.
What does your bookcase say about you?
~Sallie
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