Count me on the surprised bench with Amy. Possibly because there are so many YA books that are mysteries. I think I actually read through the entire mystery section at my library. I guess it is a prejudice to think of someone with a PhD as someone who would have been a voracious reader as a child, but I cannot imagine someone who was a voracious reader as a child not reading one mystery, ever.

Frankly, I found the whole academic pursuit almost killed my love of reading. It wasn't until I finished my first degree that I realized I don't have a brain that is naturally or happily into detailed analysis--so academic papers were a lot of work for me. Both my English and Library degress required a level of anal fury that either left me no time for or killed a love of reading for me.

This is why I realized I could not do a graduate degree in English, and that in fact my love of reading made me better suited to a history degree, because what I tended to love were the historical details and the insights books gave us into how people lived in certain times and places.

Although I did really enjoy digging apart Ulysses for literary references to other texts.

Plus, isn't Paul Auster beloved by the academic set? Or has that ship sailed? Or is it localized to NY?

Yes. Maybe. No.

I mean, I grew up with her (kinda, our parents got together when we were teens). I know she read non-erudite stuff then - lots of Stephen King, some romance.

And while her mother is a Shakespeare instructor, my father's bookshelves were the more erudite overall.

My DH tells me he's never read a mystery, so I get that some people aren't as catholic in their taste. But even he admitted to a reading a couple Hardy Boys and a Nancy Drew. And lots of gothic.

Does Poe count as mystery? I've always thought of him more in the horror vein.

I also totally forgot about all the YA mystery stuff I'd read - Nancy Drew, DUH.

Didn't the Butler do it?

NSM.

Does Poe count as mystery? I've always thought of him more in the horror vein.

He definitely did a lot of horror (though of a sort that relates to some of the modern psycho-thriller genre - Dexter for example), but Murders in the Rue Morgue (sp?) and the Gold Bug were big precursors to the detective novel.

Yeah, I thought that Poe was one of the early inventors of detective fiction.

I think that I read Dicken, Austen, and Shakespeare in high school. Maybe I only imagine that Austen was in the curriculum. I know I read her earlier than college.

The three Dupin stories, for sure.

I think what we might argue are mysteries and what people might think of if someone asks "Do you read/like mysteries? are two very different things.

My minor is in English, mostly so I could take creative writing. But even then I kind of kept my crime fiction habit on the down-low because it was "genre" and most of my teachers said that like I would say "gonorrhea". We were supposed to be mining our experiences and whatnot.I didn't read a mystery for quite a few years. Then I went through another phase where I read almost all women.(Found Sara Paretsky during that...I'm still a big fan) But really it wasn't till I read George Pelecanos' "Hard Revolution" that I realized that you can have a great mystery that makes a real point without "transcending" anything. George writes crime stories. About gentrification. And yet, they're still almost brutally cool. And I always think the "only turn the TV on in leap year" people have a secret video "vice"...like having seen every episode of "Family Matters" or something. There is something they don't want their brainiac friends to know that they watch. But then again, I'm a crime writer. I'm suspicious.

That seems right to me, Megan. I mean, I've read a few books by the Wire guys (Price, Pelecanos, Lehane, and one by Laura Lippman), and I've read most of Chandler's and Hammett's books, but I don't know if it would be right to call myself a reader of mysteries. Unless we're using the idea of mystery in a larger, more existential sense.