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

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

Technothrillers, whodunit mysteries (unless amateur slueth), Regency romance.

It's not age or anything at all, just the implicit (and sometimes explicit) stance of an utterly rational one-way-trip of a universe.

Non-fiction comes in many flavors, certainly. My faves are radical histories and personal essays.

[gaaneden.livejournal.com]

I don't read westerns and I don't read most romances. However, I will, upon occasion, read supernatural romances.

I usually go in spurts in what I want to read. Sometimes, it is high fantasy. Other times, it is cyberpunk science fiction. Other times, it is "apocalyptic" - which can be both fantasy or science fiction.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Are you saying that Regency romances have an utterly rational view of the universe? I keep thinking that's not what you're saying, but I can't get at what you are saying.

And radical histories: histories of radical individuals/movements? Histories examined from a radical perspective?

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

That's what I'm saying. Characters may act irrationally or believe irrational things, but the universe seems to push them toward the conclusion with a depressing sameness. I mean contemporary category novels written with that era for the setting, btw, not the primary stuff.

On radical histories, both, though the latter are more interesting to me. The former tend toward hagiography or tedious Monday-morning quarterbacking.

[porphyrin.livejournal.com]

I will attempt to read anything, but I find that the 'throw the book across the room factor' is higher with medical/hospital romance, medical thrillers, technothrillers, and badly written books with great globs of exposition like Dan Brown's _Da Vinci Code_.

What makes me throw books against the wall, in general, is a lack of 'getting the details right'. Things that please me will, like Bujold's _Curse of Chalion_, get even their casual referents right.

In general, I mostly read within the genre for my fiction, although my father keeps pushing "lit'rary" books at me (like _Cancer Ward_). For my nonfiction, it's biographies, histories, archaeological books like _The Ruins At Ebla_), Bible commentaries... just about anything, as long as it doesn't put me to sleep.

Although if it DOES put me to sleep, that could be desirable on insomnia nights...

And again, the stuff that's not boring gets thrown across the room if someone makes an obviously buggered-up assumption. I cite as an example a book I just tried to read on the wreck of the Batavia, which asserted that Anabaptists were a violent terrorist group.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

I don't read non-supernatural horror. Nor do I read most supernatural horror, though I read some by Stephen King and Clive Barker. Generalized Anxiety Disorder means never having to pay for that feeling.

I don't read Tom Clancy books, by Clancy himself or anyone else.

I read spy fiction only if the writer has an obvious political agenda; for example, the novels Eric Ambler wrote before WW II. Which is, oddly enough, what I _don't_ read in other fiction genres.
I think it's because, in a spy novel that's not politically charged, the events are merely moves in a game.

This isn't an established subgenre: The kind of fantasy which most interests me takes place along the border of our world and Elfland.
Note that this does not include fantasy which begins along that border and then moves firmly into Elfland.

Note: It's probably a good idea to distinguish between publishing categories and genres. Publishing category is the label the publisher puts on the book. Genre is the set of distinctions which make sense.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, now that's interesting: how do you find apocalyptic books for yourself, if that's what you're looking for? There's no section of them in the bookstore, and I haven't run into a list of them, and sometimes it's not clear from the covers how apocalyptic something is or isn't.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Some of the Anabaptists' latter-day descendants get pretty belligerent....

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Don't read, or won't read?

That is, there's lots of stuff that I don't read, but not because I'm dead set against it.

[seagrit.livejournal.com]

I pretty much only read fiction, and then an extremely high percentage of it is sci-fi and fantasy. You won't ever catch me browsing the mystery or romance sections in a library, and only once in a blue moon browsing the general fiction section.

Outside of that, I do like reading (well-translated) classical literature (think greek gods and tragic plays). I'm open to reading other books suggested by people that know me, or classic (english-lit type) novels that I haven't read before and sound interesting. You'd have to be pretty convincing for some things though, like horror or romance novels.

Within the sci-fi and fantasy realms, I do have ideas of what I'd consider sub-genres, but they're purely my own creations. The "fluff-entertainment" category that I read when I want something light (or for traveling). The "makes me think/heavy" category when I need something I can put down every few chapters. The "read-it-over-and-over-as-a-teenager" category that are meaningful to me just because of when (or how often) I read them, and are "comfortable" to read again.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Genre is at least the set of distinctions that make internal sense. I think if you try to get people to define a genre very specifically, you'll find that definitions that work perfectly fine internally don't always do so well externally.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, both or either.

[gaaneden.livejournal.com]

It's not easy. A lot of time, I have to look for books that discuss the "End" or "Cataclysm" or "War" that has ended the world as we know it. It usually includes something about having to make their way "across the devastated landscape" or "through the wastelands to pockets of civilization." Things like that. It is hit or miss to tell me if the books have the "feel" I am looking for.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I avoid horror, sports novels, medical thrillers.

Subjects I don't want to read fiction about: serial killers, the Holocaust, natural (and devastating) disasters. Note the about some books concern those subjects, I just am not interested in fiction about those things.

[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).

[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.

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

I really dislike romances, sports books, westerns except for Indian-perspective stuff, excessively pretentious books (Anne Rice, I'm looking at you...), anything written by Danielle Steele, non-supernatural or psychological horror (not into "slasher" stuff), anything where the author can't craft a decent sentence to save his or her life (Laurell K. Hamilton or James Joyce), anything written in such a way that the sentences are so heavy and sludgy that they make your brain melt under their weight (Thomas Hardy), self-help books, books written by or about celebrities, anything by Tom Clancy or John Grisham, and anything made into a made-for-TV movie by Aaron Spelling.

That leaves a lot, though. :-) I'm really fond of good sci-fi (not Orson Scott Card), good high fantasy like Tolkien, Lovecraftian tales (preferably by authors other than Lovecraft himself, since he wasn't that good a writer; good ideas, bad prose), interesting history books, scientific books that are not just references but actually explain stuff, programming books, humor books (especially Dave Barry!), and some books that just defy all categorization, like Douglas Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid".

Probably a very long answer. Oh, well. :-)

[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.

[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.

[dendrophilous.livejournal.com]

I read fantasy almost exclusively, and it's usually other-world fantasy. I only started reading urban fantasy in the past few years, but I like it.

I like space opera, though I tend not to pick it up unless it's somehow recommended, and I detest the sort of hard science fiction where the book is about the science rather than the people.

I go through phases. I no longer read much quest fantasy. At one point I read a ton of mysteries. Went on a YA kick after reading Harry Potter (I'd stopped reading YA when I got too old and hadn't yet gotten old enough to start again).

I never read romance or westerns or horror or thrillers (though I've read anywhere from a few to many of each in the past) and I hardly every read mainstream, so I stick to the SF section of bookstores.

Nonfiction: I don't read nearly enough except for excessive newspapers.

I realize I ought to expand my horizons, but it's not as if I ever run out of things to read.

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

There's almost nothing that I won't read, if, for example, a trusted friend presses it on me saying, "No, really, you've got to read this!" But I almost never read romances, thrillers, or westerns. There are particular subgenres I tend to avoid - I have a deep dislike of anthropomorphized animal stories (except, oddly enough _The Wind in the Willows_), and epic fantasies have to convince me that they're significantly better done or more original than the rest of the pack. I'm much more likely to read horror if it's supernatural, and mysteries if they're historical.

In non-fiction, I make a rough distinction between "books read for fun" and "books read to learn a specific skill" (like books that teach foreign languages or programming languages). In things like histories and science books, I also make a rough distinction between "popular" and "scholarly" works.

Age indicators like YA are sort of a partial genre. A YA is very likely to have a young protagonist, and to be about the kinds of problems and concerns that a young person would have. It's also statistically likely to be a short fast read. It's specific enough that I can say to myself, "Gee, I'm in the mood for a YA." But it still leaves a lot of territory unspecified. I almost never read YAs that aren't SF or fantasy.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Why ought you to?

[gwyneira.livejournal.com]

I usually don't read horror, thrillers, romances (but for the occasional Regency), or Clancy-like stuff, but generally I'll read almost anything, fiction or non-fiction, which I think sounds interesting or a trusted source recommends (a trusted source being someone whose tastes and judgment I know are fairly similar to my own).

As far as genre classification, I've had to develop a fairly granular system for cataloging my own book collection; once it got over about 1000, just categorizing it as "fiction" and "non-fiction" stopped working. The non-fiction is more granular than the fiction at this point (e.g., history is generally by region and then ordered by date), but the fiction is getting steadily more divided into subgenres, and I have to fight the urge to subdivide it even more, lest my poor husband never be able to find anything.

Age classifications are one thing I always have a hard time with. I do have a children's book section, but a lot of bookstores and web sites divide the category further into "middle reader", "YA", etc., and I always have a problem finding things then. YA SF and fantasy are even more confusing, because the lines between YA and adult in those categories are sometimes fairly blurry.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

For non-speculative YAs, I've enjoyed Garret Freymann-Weyr and Sara Ryan, but you can blame sdn for that. I recommend both.

[dendrophilous.livejournal.com]

Variety. Because I think that ideas spark other ideas. If I read a variety of books, I can draw on elements of everything. It expands my toolbox, even if only subconsciously.

[sraun]

I aggressively do not read horror (which, unfortunately, means that every time I've opened a Neil Gaiman, I've had to give up after the first chapter, if I even get that far). I mostly avoid cyberpunk - it tends to be too dark for me.

Hmmm - recently, my reading has tended to be more character-driven stuff. Which you can usually find in any genre - Bujold does it in various SF genres, and in fantasy (do the two Chalion books count as High Fantasy?); Steve Miller & Sharon Lee do it in space opera and this weird regency to SF transplant.

(Oh, and I just friended you - I hope you remember me & my wife Irene from DD-B's birthday party.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yep, hi! Your user pic looks like you, so it was pretty clear that you were yourself and not someone else.

I think I'm going to have to count the Chalion books as high fantsy, yah. Timprov pointed out to me that while I was not going with the "books I don't like are high fantasy" theory, there were a few things I was picking out as flaws in high fantasy that don't have to be. So I think the Chalion books are.