Today is a bright, shiny day, and there's two feet of snow on the ground.
Strange as it may seem I love this weather, partly because I don't have to go out in it. Just as I like mysteries, westerns, literary fiction, etc. From time to time, in small doses.
I have all kinds of different genres on my bookshelf. I read Christian inspirational, contemporary and even biography (some of these are my all-time favorites), but mostly I read science fiction and fantasy.
A few generations ago the two were lumped together. "Fantasy" covered the whole range that is now half a hundred specific genres and people who were into such things read whatever they could get their hands on. Now I find that some read steampunk and some read high fantasy and some read urban fantasy.
I'm not sure why that is. I used to read (and still read) a whole range of fantasy and science fiction variants. My own stories are a combination of the two, usually, and defy description in the "standard" genres which were not even recognized a few generations ago.
I wonder if someday we'll have different genres for high fantasy with elves and high fantasy set on another world and high fantasy historical, etc. You could get priority paralysis deciding which genre, let alone which book!
I can't imagine that narrowing your interests to that extent would be healthy, but I do see it more and more often.
When a child finds something s/he wants to read, h/er parents want to encourage the reading so they search out more of the same. And the child learns that s/he LIKES this kind and HATES that kind, even though s/he seldom, if ever, reads it.
Rather like spinach, or liver. Or winter and summer. Or cats and dogs.
Until we look across a gulf a mile wide and wonder why on earth anyone would be over there. We then stare in shock as someone calmly steps across to the other side and the reality becomes apparent.
NaNo update:
I hit 23000 words last week, but part of it is going to have to be rewritten. Normally I force myself to just keep writing, but something about that last section is screaming at me and I've learned to pay attention. So I'll probably lose about 1000 words, but those words were written when I was half asleep so they don't count. :)
With any luck (and a lot of work) I should hit 25k today. 27 if I can manage it.
:::standing back in awe and admiration:::
ReplyDeleteI, for one, wouldn't mind further clarification of sub-genres. Sometimes I want to read fantasy without elves, sometimes medieval, sometimes high, sometimes contemporary... But yes, too granular classifications can introduce a whole new set of woes.
So we need a system of classification without creating new genres, right? :)
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