A-Z List: Books My Parents Enjoyed

My mother (Joyce Woodbury, 1930-2026) read to me when I was growing up. That ritual lasted until junior high. It then ended since I started to finish the books we'd started together. My mom was a little disappointed but she was too voracious a reader herself to complain about my own behavior. 

We shared a love of murder mysteries, an interest in Nero Wolfe, a love of Austen. But we also had differences in taste and topics. I watched Nero Wolfe--read only a few of the Rex Stout books; my mom far preferred the books. I never got into Horatio Hornblower (despite Gruffudd in the titular role in the TV series) while my mom read and enjoyed C.S. Forester's novels. I was always a greater fan of sci-fi, fantasy, and graphic novels than my mom. 

My tastes differed even more with my dad (Hugh Woodbury, 1928-2025). In the final four or so years of his life, while he was living in an assisted living facility, I brought him books from the local libraries. My choices at first were hit or miss, but I began to develop a sense of what he enjoyed based on whether he had started a book and commented on it. Some of those books will show up on this list. 

This list is partly a homage to my parents' reading habits and to the bookcases in our family home, full of picture books, kids' books, religious books, fiction books, non-fiction books, encyclopedias, owned books, library books...

The list is also a look at taste: what people like, what people don't like, how much taste could be the product of environment, how much the product of supposedly inherited genes, and how much purely choice. 

A is for Austen will start the list...