Centuria I, Experimentum 30: differences in languages read

Languages for work and languages for reading pleasure

When I read for work (exempting administrative texts), putting primary texts and secondary texts into the same basket, the four most common languages of such texts are:

• English
• Latin
• German
• Italian

Now, I'm member of a private reading circle (reading mostly novels [sensu largo]), and the original languages of the texts we read and read (in the original and/or in ranslation) there during the last few years are/were:

•  English
•  French
•  Polish
• Japanese

Quite a different list.

Ok, 19th/20th/21st century Latin belles lettres texts are not exactly extremely common. But as for the rest? 

Why, when it comes to "texts for work",  are German and Italian texts more "appealing" (or more necessary) for me than French, Polish or Japanese texts (in the original or in translation)?  

Why, when it comes to "texts for pleasure",  are French, Polish or Japanese texts (in the original or in translation) more "appealing" to us than German and Italian texts? (No, there is quite some overlap in professional deformations amongst us: 3 of us 5 do have some sort of a background in Renaissance studies.)

I have no causes to offer, not even models/hypotheses to save the phenomena. 

And that might indicate that language "preferences" belong to the animalia  section of naturalia : without causes and with no or at the best unstable models/hypotheses.