Booking Through Thursday - Now or Then?

I'm rather late in doing this weeks BTT question but here I am finally.

"Do you prefer reading current books? Or Older ones? Or outright old ones? (As in, yes, there's a difference between a book from 10 years ago and say, Charles Dickens or Plato)

This is quite an interesting question since I read books from all three categories, admittedly the majority are books published within the last 5 years but I do have quite a lot of books which were originally published in the 19th and even the 18th century (I haven't actually read them all but it's on my to-do list :P). I do quite enjoy reading classics as you can get a good feel for what society was like at that time because unlike historical fiction set in that particular era classic novels were the contemporary works at that time and it's obviously a more authentic picture of the times.

Of course with modern literature it's much easier to read as the language is more what we use in everyday life. I find that when I read Jane Austen aloud I tend to make mistakes because the word order is different to what I'm used to.

I think the main reason I like reading books published in recent years is that the range of genres available is vastly larger than what was around back in the 19th Century because our ability to imagine strange and crazy things has grown so much and there's a lot less of a taboo on certain subjects i.e. homosexuality - you'd never have seen a GLBT book even as recent as the 1950's when being gay was still a crime in several countries.

So to sum up this rather short and terribly incoherent post (I've written bits at three different times) Although I do like reading out-right old books such as Jane Austen's and older books such as Daphne du Maurier's my greatest preference is for the new and awfully exciting books which have come out these past few years and are going to be coming out in the near future - hel-lo Mockingjay anyone??

Gah I so should think these things through more :S
LadyV