Genres

[mrissa]

Okay, you people, I'm in a restless mood sitting here writing my book, and that means it's question time on the livejournal. What I want to know about this time is genres and subgenres:

Do you have genres you definitely don't read? (And if so, what?) Do you have subgenres you definitely don't read? (And again, what?) Do you have genres or subgenres in which you'll read very nearly anything? Does genre have anything to do with what book you get in the mood for, or do other characteristics have more to do with what book you choose to read at a given moment? For what else do you use genre (recommending books to others, finding it in libraries or bookstores,...)? Do you feel certain that you know the difference between genres? Between subgenres? Do you make up your own categories? How do you categorize nonfiction, if at all? Do you consider age indicators (middle-grades, YA, etc.) to be genres or some other type of categorization or completely irrelevant to you or what? What does it take to get you to read a book in a genre you usually dislike? Any other genre-related thoughts you want to share with me? Is the word "genre" starting to sound nonsensical the way words do if you repeat them enough?

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I'd say I don't read horror, but there are some books I've read that would be hard to explain on that basis. I don't read genre romance or westerns, that I can recall (but a couple of my favorite books have high romance content -- Busman's Honeymoon and A Civil Campaign come to mind -- and the romance portions are important parts of why I like those books). I don't read sports books much at all.

I avoid literary SF and fantasy mostly, but this is somewhat ill-defined. Mostly I know it after the fact, when explaining why I didn't like a book. I tend to like space opera, but not the stupid kind; but I like action-adventure with high stakes and highly-competent characters who do things themselves. I generally prefer SF to fantasy. I particularly seem to avoid big fantasy series.

I also read a fair amount of historical fiction, both from actual periods, and written into various periods.

I also read a fair amount of mystery.

I do use genre for finding things *a lot*. If they don't have it at Hugos/Edgars, I'm probably not very interested :-). Remembering that Edgars carries wooden sailing navy books, and Hugos carries Clavell's _Shogun_ (it's a first-contact novel).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I like the romances in Busman's Honeymoon (and the books leading up to it) and A Civil Campaign, too, but I think it was very good from my perspective that the people involved were otherwise interesting and doing other stuff. I mean, I think people ought to demand that of their own actual real-life romantic involvements, for whom they have considerably more hormonal interference with analytical thought. Neither Sayers nor Bujold seems to take it for granted that being the principals in a romantic tale is enough to make a protag interesting. And hurrah for that.

Also, I firmly believed that there was a chance Peter and Harriet would not end up together in the earlier volumes, and that Miles would be once again left bachelor and forlorn. I didn't feel what Nick was describing above, that the universe was shoving them towards an inevitable, determined outcome. That helped a lot.

Yeah, I lean towards the Hugo/Edgar standard for fiction myself. Not always, but often.