Moving here so I can read the comments. :)

What are some of your favorite books? In fiction I loved The Secret History by Donna Tartt, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova and Madeleine's ghost, by Robert Giradi. In nonfiction, I tend to favor history, especially British history. I'll read anything by Alison Weir or Antonia Fraser.

Fiction: Anything by Amy Tan. Dirk Gentley's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams. The Iliad. Pride & Prejudice. Elizabeth Peters's Vicky Bliss series. (I like some of her Amelia Peabody series, too, but it has lost my interest.) Animal Farm. The Aeneid. The Once & Future King. The John Ciardi translation of The Inferno. The Mists of Avalon. The Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula K. LeGuin. Most anything by Tony Hillerman. Lord of the Rings. Lysistrata & The Birds by Aristophanes. Soulless by Gail Carriger is a new book that I enjoyed. For fluff I read Carol Nelson Douglas's Irene Adler novels, Evanovich, Hiaasan, Aaron Elkins (though his books have become travelogues and I'm less excited now), J.D. Robb, and Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse series.

I'm obviously an escapist who loves her genre fic. I hate listing things because I KNOW I'm forgetting some really important books.

Non-Fiction: The Woman That Never Evolved by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. I love that book SO HARD. I have read it probably 5 or 6 times, which is amazing because it's very dense prose. The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins. Most books by Stephen J. Gould, even if he was sort of a dick. Several lab manuals for bone classes I took. (I know, that's weird.) Edith Hamilton's Mythology. I tend to read biology and/or science-y magazines if I'm going to read non-fiction. I prefer to get my non-fiction on t.v., which is actually the bulk of my television viewing.

Cookbooks (yes, it's an entire genre for me): The Vegetarian Epicure Vols. 1 & 2 changed my life. Previously, being a vegetarian was all about what I didn't eat and those books opened my eyes to a new way of thinking. The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book. The Veganomicon.

It's funny that you bring up Alison Weir. I recently bought a copy of her Six Wives of Henry VIII because I'd read a borrowed copy years ago and watching The Tudors made me want to pick it up again. On a whim I also ordered a collection of three of Jean Plaidy's novels, entitled "Katharine of Aragon," but haven't gotten around to reading it.