Thank you for broadening my mind

Is it the lack of intellectual stimulation, the result of being a stay-at-home mom with two preschool-age children? Is it a maturity that comes with the 30s, otherwise known as "the fourth decade" to those who want to torture themselves?  Is it a change of interest as the world seems to set itself on fire?  A need to know as much as possible in the belief that other aspects of life will be explained?  Is it a way to enrich my writing, or perhaps escape from the burden of putting words on paper?

Whatever it is, turning 30 (and now 31) has produced in me a propensity for learning.  Let me preface this by pointing out that I didn't used to read nonfiction.  I had my fill in college and working in news every day.  My at-home reading was always mystery/thriller fiction--usually with an edge toward the airport novel.  You know the kind--you pick it up and it's a short, thrilling ride with questionable writing skill but full of action.

Now, nonfiction fills my shelves, with the classics keeping up in the race and both trailing just slightly behind literary fiction.

Sure, age has something to do with it.  But even more to blame is you.

That's right, my blogging friends, you have opened my eyes to the world.  Where I once read only male authors and only quick thrillers, I now read Tana French, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, and international fiction that blows my mind.  Where I once thrived on the unreal, I now thrill at the idea a story could actually be real.  (Often the real is more perverse than its counterpart.)

So, thank you.  I have read books set on every continent and by authors from nearly as many places.  I have learned so much from my nonfiction turn and it is all piling up in my head and my notes, hoping to spill into my own writing.