See, I wouldn't assume they are a big reader, as weird as that sounds. When I wanted fluff reading in school I turned to Regency romances. Most people there didn't get that at all. Not just the romance thing, but that I'd want to read for fun. I wish I were kidding. I had lot of conversations about "books," but not about reading.

It's a narrow kind of reading and the people that do get Ph.D.'s don't so much read for fun, and are primarily interested in literary history and theory.

And I feel like you're still missing my point. As KIDS, that's what PhDs are like?

As an English grad student, I read mysteries to get the taste of Henry James out my head.

do thrillers count as mysteries?

They are distinct but related in my head. I'd shelve them together for marketing purposes, I think.

Nevada Barr is definitely mysteries.

That can't be grammatically correct, but I'm leaving it.

Speaking of grad school, I guess I wasn't alone in my crushing debt: [link]

NYU's student debt alone is bigger than the gross domestic product of 12 countries.

As KIDS, that's what PhDs are like?

I t heart Amy. I get it. Like, how could you have been a kid and never read at least one Encyclopedia Brown book. I am not a big mystery reader and even I read Encyclopedia Brown!

Maybe she is out-genreing kid's lit as not broken down into further sub-genres?

Moreover, if you had to take an survey classes, how did you do Victorian without Robert Louis Stevenson or certainly Arthur Conan Doyle (in addition and alongside, of course, Jeremy Bentham and Thomas Carlyle).

Or she could just be one of those people that is proud of stuff like that, like the people that "don't own a TV."

Bleak House is also in some ways considered the precursor to the detective novel.

As KIDS, that's what PhDs are like?

Did you see The Squid and the Whale? Some families are like that, where only serious literature is condoned or worth discussing in the house. And some kids don't read for fun at all, but get into a fairly academic approach to literature as early as Middle School, which continues as college prep in High School.

I remember Rebecca Lizard talking about how unbelievably liberating and eye-opening it was for her to discover fan fiction online. How it was so different from what she grew up with and was exposed to.

What megan alludes to with this:

Most people there didn't get that at all. Not just the romance thing, but that I'd want to read for fun.

is what I'm talking about. It's a huge cultural difference and, frankly, its the reason there have been some very heated discussions in this thread.

The academics I knew didn't read for fun. Or their idea of fun was parsing Ulysses text. They were usually precocious readers of "high" literature from an early age and their idea of pleasurable reading was locking themselves in their bedroom for a weekend to read War and Peace. (Something my first girlfriend did every year for her birthday.)