Jean Anne Fitzpatrick
Fiction
Reading is my favored form of escapism, particularly reading novels. I rarely watch television and manage to miss a lot of popular films, which means certain trends in popular culture completely pass me by. However, I can't claim great intellectualism on that account, since my taste in fiction is hardly limited to great literature.
I read a lot of science fiction, and some things that are categorized as fantasy. I also enjoy historical novels, which is another way of escaping to a place far removed from the here and now. If you tried to determine my favorite authors by counting books on my shelves, you would correctly identify old favorites like Ursula LeGuin, C. J. Cherryh, and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, along with newer addictions like Lois McMaster Bujold and Neil Stephenson.
However, not all of my reading falls in those categories, or at least not tidily. One of my all-time favorite novels is Three Times Table by Sara Maitland, which has a fantasy element, but is certainly not swords-and-sorcery. Another novel that I utterly adore is Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer, a work of spectacular everyday magic.