What Type of Reader are you? What is your favorite type of book to read? Or do you even enjoy reading? No matter how much a person likes or dislikes reading, every person in today’s society has to read at least once a day. There is so much material to read, one cannot avoid reading something. Not only are there many different types of material to read, but there are also many different types of readers. Readers can be labeled either by what they read, or why they read. There are the people who read because reading is something they love to do.

These Lovers of Literature do not care what the material is they are reading, or what kind of prose it contains; they just read to be reading. I think I belong in this category because I enjoy reading and it is something I do for all sorts of reasons: when I am bored, when I am about to go to bed, and sometimes even when I am angry. These people seem fascinated by letters and the way they shape words and sentences, poems and essays, stories and books. Lovers of Literature can be seen checking out many varieties of books from libraries, such as historical fiction or classical literature.

Lovers of Literature seem interested in everything from the Bronte sisters to Louis L’amour. Quite the opposites of Lovers of Literature are the Necessity Readers: those of the public who read only when they have to. My brother fits perfectly into this group, seeing as he never reads unless absolutely necessary. “Why read when you can be doing something fun,” he always asks me whenever I am reading and he wants me to do something else. Necessity Readers read no more than completely essential, and only when it benefits them, such as for class or work.

Necessity Readers see reading as a must-do activity and are not enthused by it in any way. These people hardly ever read because they want to; the idea of reading for pleasure seems absolutely foreign to them. It really is a disgrace that it seems as though most of the public is composed of Necessity Readers. We cannot forget the select few who read only science fiction and/or comic books. These people are most commonly known as nerds or geeks, but I like to think of them as Scientific Thinkers. Scientific Thinkers collect comic books and keep them sacred and close to their hearts.

It is a favorite pastime of many Scientific Thinkers to compare their comic book collections with others of this category. It is a little unsettling how quickly a person of this group can tell you exactly what happened in a specific volume of the Superman or Spiderman comics. An example of some people that fits into this group is the “nerds” from the television show Beauty and the Geek. Such books as The Lord of the Rings trilogy and movies such as Star Wars may also catch these people’s attention. There are those who enjoy reading, though they mostly engage in the reading of mystery novels.

These Nancy Drews of the literature world take pleasure in reading mystery novels because they like to guess at the mysteries themselves all the way through the book. I suppose they want to see if they are as good at solving mysteries as Sherlock Holmes himself. The Nancy Drews of the world probably enjoy reading such authors as Lois Lowry, Mary Higgins Clark, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and, of course, Edward Stratemeyer. Another genre of readers who are mainly only concerned with their own taste in books is the Historians.

These select few are the ones that can be seen with their noses stuck in either biographies or autobiographies about such people as John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Jr. Historians more than likely take pleasure in reading enormous books about wars or the significant people in the wars. These people are more than likely very knowledgeable about a lot of commonly unknown facts about history. Historians could probably tell you every General and commanding officer in the Revolutionary War, and then tell you what he was best known for.

There is one more group of selective readers: those who read the romance novels. These Romantics are all the time caught up in a lusty novel about a housewife and a pool boy. Romantics mainly consist of middle-aged and older women who have more than likely lost most of the lust out of their relationship. My aunt fits into this group of Romantics without a doubt. Others who make up this group are those who are looking for the perfect love of their life and read these novels, which more than likely will give them the wrong idea about love.

Romantic novels make love seem so perfect and flawless. Romantics almost certainly like such authors as Barbara Bretton and Elizabeth Sinclair. The people I like to think of as Social Readers are those who read mostly on the internet, in newspapers, or magazines. These people read mostly for information and news, either about current happenings or about the latest goings-on of movie stars. These are the people that can be seen in line at the grocery store, who are ten feet behind the person in front of them because they haven’t looked up from Vogue in the last five minutes.

Social Readers can also probably be recognized by their choice of television shows they watch. More than likely they will enjoy the entertainment news programs such as Entertainment Tonight and others of that sort. In conclusion, there are many different types of reading material out there, but not only that, there are many different groups of readers out there also. If a person only takes the time to think about his or her likes and dislikes, he or she can easily avoid feeling overwhelmed when it comes time to choose reading material. He or she might even be able to decipher which group they belong in