If there are signs you’re turning into one or another of your parents, book and film tastes must be among them.

My dad was an avid reader, his nose usually buried in war-related or espionage/thriller types of tales, as I can recall. He died in 2010, so I can’t ask for exact titles. I’d have to guess that John le Carré tomes were among his piles of paperbacks, which often had torpedoes, submarines and such on their covers.

I’ve noticed in my own reading that sometime over the decade or so, I began gravitating away from more literary fare toward genre reading myself: science fiction (such as Pierce Brown’s Red Rising series), thrillers with a sci-fi bent (a la Claire North’s books), dystopian and post-apocalyptic novels (Blake Crouch or Emily St. John Mandel) and occasional forays into horror (mostly Stephen King) and mystery (John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee books).

I’m sure the challenges to our attention brought on by phones, social media, subscription services and other trappings of modern life have contributed to my breezy reading choices. If I’m being honest, I feel as though I need an exciting page turner in order to sit still and read these days. If I ever get down about my reading choices, I think, “Hey, at least I’m reading.”

Last night, I noticed my dad’s influence, again, when I watched — alone and way too enthralled — “The Gray Man,” a thriller on Netflix in which Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans chew a lot of scenery in the name of, I don’t know, but it was exciting to watch. It may not have a high score on Rotten Tomatoes, but I’m pretty sure my dad would have dug it.

And apparently, it’s based on a novel that published in 2009, less than a year before my dad died.

I wonder if he read it.

—David Jasper, reporter and editor