What is the difference?

 Books I have read

Books I finished reading

This is a question I get asked, "What books have read?"

My reply usually is "Do you mean read, or finished reading, as they are two different categories?"

I started to read books by Satre, Proust, Checkhov. this suprised my late friend in Seattle. She imagined me reading Hammond Innes, Alastair Maclean, and other adventure stories, which I have, but I have a wide range of books I have read including stories by Wilkie Collins, Louis L' Amour, and Douglas Adams.

Adams and L'Amour posed a question for me, the book I read was their last, and they knew they were dying, did they care what people thought of the book as they had already made their reputation?

Those are some of the writers I read, but didn't finish.

                                          

                                                       A popular myth

A popular myth is men don't read female authors, that is one of the biggest errors you can make.

I wouldn't be making an error thinking men read Agatha Christie, Kathy Reiches, J.K.Rowling, Patricia Cornwell, to name a few. I can name a few lesser-known writers I have read, I was very keen on Marianne MacDonald, until she dropped off the writing scene, I have read, and wished I hadn't Sara Paretsky. The gender of the writer has no effect on who I am reading, I read a story that interests me.

Among writer I finished their books I can add Rudyard Kipling, Sheridan Le Fanu, Edgar Allan Poe, Ted Lewis, Graham Greene, Len Deighton, Carl Sagan, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and of course Maclean, and Innes. There are others, but the list would get boring.

I wanted to consider myself like Chechov, until I read a short story by him, it was sssssoooo boring, and confolluted.

Yes, I have read Soviet writers, I also love Russian music, and opera, that does NOT make me a Communist, unlike so many who only see what the party wish you to see, in 1970 on a cruise, I saw the darker, unseen side