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

[palinade.livejournal.com]

I don't usually read Harlequin romances (or Romances similar to the Harlequin format), westerns, chick lit, political books, celebrity books, or most mathematical reference material. And I don't spend a lot of time in the Self-Help section, either. Or diet books. Or parenting books. Um, there's a whole range of stuff I don't read.

I do make up my own tags for sub-categories. One is the "fluffy book" where not a whole lot happens and there's very little tension, and everything is light and lovely. Another sub-category is the "Aren'twesosmartwinkwinknudge club" novel where the writer is so full of his/her own wit that it's completely distracting from the the intended story. And the most used sub-category (which for a lot of books is a whole genre unto itself) is the "badly done derivation". Y'know, those books that *everyone* thinks is the best thing since pre-sliced cheese when in fact it is only a pale derivative of something already done hundreds of times.

I won't go into the breakdown of the sff genre because I'm not sure there are any stiff and unbendable "rules." What one person calls "High Fantasy" another person may not. What one person calls "Space Opera", someone else may disagree. And then there are those novels that straddle all the fences. I just like to lump those into the sff genre and leave it at that.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I read parenting books once. I figured out that one of the parents in my first novel was exactly the type to read parenting books and, worse, do what they said, so I had to see what kind of thing they'd be telling her about parenting an introverted geeky overweight 14-year-old boy who had recently lost his father. The results were really scary.

I really hate hearing people praise the innovation and creativity of books I know to be practically cut and pasted from better books.