30 Books I Loved in My 30 Years (Birthday Post)

Hello readers,

I just turned 30! I thought it would be a fun trip down memory lane to take a look at the books that helped shape who I am today and how my reading tastes changed over the years. This is a rather long post, but I am indulging myself this one time.

First I’ll start with my favorite childhood books! I’ve read a lot since I can remember, with my parents also being big readers and my little sister, too. We spent countless Summers at my grandmother’s house reading all the books we could put our dirty little hands on.

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I was tending towards fantasy back then, which is still one of my favorite genres nowadays! I also read a lot of comics (hundreds of the Turma da Mônica, for sure).

Enter my teen years! This was the time when I discovered epic fantasy and mysteries/whodunits. I lost count of how many Agatha Christies I read on my teens (my favorite is Death on the Nile). I also read a lot of cute contemporaries since they were lying around the house a lot (?), but I hardly remember them.

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I read a lot on my school library back then, which is how I got to some Brazilian classics like Pedro Bandeira’s books, O Menino do Dedo Verde and a few more. Ahmnat is a Brazilian fantasy book about a girl who makes a pact with death and, before she dies, she turns into Death herself. I loved this so much I emailed the author and he let me be a beta reader for his next book! My name is there and everything! Not shown above are all the other Artemis Fowl and Harry Potter books I read on my teens, too!

From 15 to 17 I got on a Classics mood and picked up every book I could find on my grandparents’ shelves. I did not like many, but I did really like Animal Farm by George Orwell! I also fell in love with Hilda Hilst poems at their place!

After starting University I stopped reading for a while, but it came back full force on somewhere on my early 20s again. My reading taste in this decade can be separated in two very distinct phases: early 20s and late 20s. My early 20s brought a re-discovery of my love for fantasy and I slowing dipped my toes into literary fiction, historical fiction and non-fiction. I also created my blog at 26!

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I created this blog three and a half years ago – my reading stats sky-rocketed and I read a LOT of young adult, fantasy and contemporaries.

On my late 20s, I experimented a lot more with different genres and changed my taste in fiction considerably. The past 2 years or so have seen the most drastic change, with fantasy and sci-fi (especially YA) showing up less and less on my reading list and instead more non-fiction and literary fiction showing up. I still read a lot of fantasy, but I’m way pickier about it. I get the feeling I’ll be back on my fantasy mood pretty soon though (true love always comes back).

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For my 30s, there is a lot I want to read, namely I would like to pick up more Classics again, more non-fiction and more Brazilian literature, perhaps fewer contemporaries. I don’t think my taste in books is set in stone and I’m curious to see where it will go!