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.

I took several literature courses in college, including two semesters of Shakespeare (one for histories and comedies, one for tragedies). Comes in handy when I watch the movie versions of his plays.

But I enjoy a fairly wide swath of fiction. I finished my latest commute-to-work book this morning (Anthony Trollope, Castle Richmond) and may finish my latest lunchtime book this weekend (Stephen King, It).

I didn't know that Lehane wrote for The Wire. Why aren't they mysteries? Aren't police procedurals a type of mystery?

I read Erika Jahneke.

Her comment (xpost with mine, natch) about crime fiction made me think I should clarify: there's crime and mystery at the heart of a lot of novels that I love. It might just be my lack of knowledge about the genre, but when a book gets the mystery genre tag, I tend to think that it means that it is a procedural drama. And I'm sure there's a bunch of those I would like a lot, but I also know there's a bunch that I wouldn't like, and I'm not really all that sure about how to navigate them. Also I don't have much time for reading these days, and I have a huge backlog in my books-to-read pile, so I'm not really interested in diving in, either.

So you see a large area called "crime fiction" within which falls a subset which are mysteries?

I think they are. And Joseph Wambaugh served as Mystery Writers of America president so they think they are, too. I think Price and Lehane have literary cachet now, so they don't have to claim it if they don't want, but "Samaritan" is a mystery.