Monday, October 13, 2008

Musing Mondays

The blogette over at Should be Reading is keeping the world blogging with her weekly Musing Mondays question. This week's question is (drum roll, please):
"Could you narrow down your reading to a favorite genre and author? Why or why not?"
My answer to this is a relatively definitive, "Yes." My favorite genre is hands-down literary fiction. The only foray outside of literary fiction that gets much play from me is Young Adult fiction of the literary variety (think, John Green and Robert Cormier).

Rarely do I stray from that prescription, but if I do it's generally because I've been semi-forced and/or coerced to by a book club or cultural phenomena. I've got a rationale for every book I've read that isn't classified as Literary Fiction (Adult or YA), none of which is because it just "caught my eye." Recent Examples:
  • I read the Twilight series novels this past summer because I wanted to see what all the hype was about (YA Fiction, Science Fiction)
  • Right now I'm reading The Sparrow for my library's book club (Science Fiction)
  • I read and enjoyed the Mortal Instruments series last month on a recommendation (YA Fiction, Science Fiction)
  • I'm reading The Glass Castle for a class (Non-Fiction, Memoir)
  • I've read 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel and am reading Aspects of the Novel (both Non-Fiction, Literary Critique) to improve my writing
  • This past weekend I read book one in the Blue Bloods series as some research for a novel I'm working on (YA Fiction, Science Fiction)

How about you? Are you a categorical or non-categorical reader?

7 comments:

Confuzzled Shannon said...

Yeah I gave into the hype about Twilight too. Now i am hooked.

Robin M said...

I was curious about the Twilight series as well and actually enjoyed it.

My post is up now.

Robin

Anonymous said...

Interesting! You're the first one I know of who's said "yes" to this question! :D Thanks for your answer!

PS...I gave in to the "Twilight" hype, too, and I absolutely LOVED the series! ;)

Anonymous said...

I have given in to read the twilight series. Yet!

:D

My musings

Sabrina said...

I have been reading a lot of Sci-Fi lately. Partly because my crush keeps recommending these books to me, partially because i am a nerd and I like Sci-fi.
It's a win-win situation.
I have not read Twilight yet... although i feel like i should, just for the sake of being the school library lady and needing to be up to date on what the kids are reading.

Literature Crazy said...

Sabrina,

You most definitely have to read Twilight to be "in" with the students. I'd also recommend The Mortal Instruments series (City of Bones, City of Ashes, and the soon-to-be-released City of Glass). My 8th-grade nephew totally flipped for the series by Robert Riordan that's about a kid descended from the gods (that was a Young Hoosier Book Award winner, a pretty big deal to us from Indiana). Also, he totally loves those Ted Dekker books (Circle Trilogy, Lost Series, and Showdown Trilogy) and House which Dekker co-wrote with Frank Peretti. Are you allowed to have Christian-y allegory books and/or recommend them to students? (Like LOTR and the Chronicles of Narnia stuff?)

Sabrina said...

Yes. We can have LOTR, Narnia and Peretti.
Thanks for the suggestions about the other books. I think next book order I will lobby for Twilight the other books you mentioned.