Reading? I like Robert Wilson, Robert Goddard, Agatha Christie, Patricia Wentworth, Georgette Heyer, and many more, too many to list. Any old detective books or historical. I took English and History (second subject) at university, so I've read a few of the classics, too, especially Jane Austen, Dickens, Shakespeare and Gibbons. I also like those Falco books by Lindsey Davis. And Simon Brett's stuff- he reads his own work. And, of course,  P. G. Wodehouse.  Anything by him! Overall, I like any history or detective books- which is what I've ended up writing- combining the two. You should read a lot if you're a writer. You can learn technical things that might for some reason be causing you mild amounts of trouble. But don't get too pretentious and literary- you don't want to be one of those precious writers, who think writing streams of their thoughts is somehow interesting. Great writers wrote stories, plain and simple- even Joyce wrote stories- Ulysses is very readable.

Reading one's own work, for a relatively shy person (which means most of us, I expect), is quite an ordeal, as I said. My audiobook (Troublesome Disguises) is nearly eleven hours long. That's eleven hours of sustained characterisation (hopefully) and eleven hours that probably took more like five or six days to achieve, not counting days off and breaks, because of all the re-reading and cutting. It is a performance and has very little to do with the skill of writing. Writing this blog is simple because I just type- it's just typing- but writing is obviously much more concentrated and thoughtful. Reading is interpretation of characters and atmosphere and requires quite different input. It's not for the coy. Especially if you plan to subject your efforts to the rest of the world! Even if sometimes the world won't listen.