I was re-reading some fiction and chuckling as I turned pages, with an occasional frisson of emotion and an appreciation for the use of the language … when it struck me.

I much prefer English authors to American authors.

Which I find odd to say, as an American … but also undeniable.

And this preference seems to range across the breadth of my literary interests.

To wit: Tolkien, Le Carre, Keegan, O’Brian, Mantel, Doyle, Orwell …

I am an admirer of England and its history and its empire. That is a start.

But I ought to prefer American authors, shouldn’t I? They are more likely to speak my language. They are more likely to be semi-modern. They are more likely to offer me insights into my countrymen and myself.

But no. Not even.

Let’s run over some genres I like.

–Fantasy. I do not read much fantasy, mostly and because Tolkien already did it better than anyone else. The imagination, the sophistication of his created world, its joys and tragedies, the languages … What American can do that? Isaac Asimov, kinda …

–Adventure. This is a landslide. Defoe. Patrick O’Brian and the Aubrey-Maturin series, all 20 volumes of it. C.S. Forester and his darker yet also addicting Horatio Hornblower. Kipling. Perhaps it was the empire that made this possible. England/Britain straddled the globe for 200 years and perhaps it stimulated imaginations. And shall we place Joseph Conrad here, too?

–Military history. John Keegan heads the list, a brilliant theoretician and nearly always a compelling writer; I read everything he produced. Also, the biographical writing of all those First World War authors, from Graves to Manning and Sassoon.

–Detective novels. Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes cannot be topped. The volume of Agatha Christie’s is bettered only by her handling of the language. Connelly is pretty good, but I would give him up (and Harry Bosch, too) for the previous two.

–Spy novels. This may be the only genre where an American is higher in my esteem than any Englishman — Alan Furst nosing out John Le Carre. But Le Carre was very, very good before his guilt and bitterness (he worked in British intelligence) turned his last half-dozen books into anti-American screeds. And Le Carre is backed by the likes of Ambler and Greene.

–Science fiction. Americans hold out fairly well here; the aforementioned Asimov. But for dystopia, which is a kind of science fiction (so far), he is overpowered by Orwell and Golding, for starters.

–History. Hillary Mantel’s two books on the England of Henry VIII are readable and informative in a way I cannot associate with an American author.

–Shlock. In the pulpy/page-turner genre, I prefer Lee Child and his Reacher. Set in America, written by a Englishman.

Even in the category of “bright new writers” the English have Tom Rachman … and I’m not even sure which American falls in here.

Two American writers I admire, mostly, are Ernest Hemingway and Paul Theroux. Who did their best work while traveling outside the U.S.

What is it that makes the English better?

A better feel for the language, enabling them to make good use of the outer limits of the enormous word hoard that Americans, with their homelier phraseology cannot match?

Something about their class structure and thereby repressed (when sober) personalities that allows them to find the humor in sly turns of phrase, in awkward social situations?

More history to tap into, allowing them to wade unafraid into world events from a century or two ago? Better education (at the upper end of the spectrum)? Greater imagination stemming from the-sun-never-sets empire?

I could come up with more guesses. At the end of the day, it comes down to what is in my Kindle and what are in my books back in California … and the books I love most are nearly all by English writers.

Maybe it’s not odd, after all.