Article written by Rory Hawkins.
If you read all of this, you can take it two ways:
1) A genre bookworm telling fellow genre bookworms how to get out of just reading within the same parameters; or
2) A reader telling others how to get out of reading the same stuff over and over again.
Similar, aren’t they? But then I don’t want to push anyone aside. Just for the sake of ease, fantasy/sci-fi will be the prime example. Have no doubts, I am a fantasy bookworm.
We all grow up on this genre – that’s why it’s so prevalent. As children, make-belief can be as true to us as anything else. You know home is home, God/Santa is always watching and what Mum read to you last night can’t have just been words and pictures on a page. Magical and out-of-world adventures are just a step by step evolution of the simple fantasies we knew as kids.
The concept of fantasy stories embodies make-belief in such a pure way. It throws reality to the wind – what you’re reading isn’t real, and isn’t that its greatest strength? Immersion and escapism can be implemented to their simplest or grandest. It may not be so true for you, but because so many readers start with fantasy, it becomes such an easy go-to. And no matter the genre, therein is the problem.
Consider for a second: whatever you started reading first, you’re probably reading some reiteration of now. Not to say that doing that is inherently a bad thing – books should be fun! But if you’ve ever been in that transitory period without anything, hanging onto vaguely soonish releases, then you’re stuck in a genre. That’s when too much of a good thing becomes more than a little stagnant.
Cast your thoughts back to why you continue to read. The aforementioned escapism and immersion, exploration of different perspectives, themes of understanding through conflict, imagined conclusions to very real problems, the list goes on. Why limit that? Regardless of genre, reading first grabbed your interest because the contents were something outside of what you knew, ideas different to your own that you wanted to know. That said, only reading within the same bounds over and over does nothing to develop your own ideas, of reading and books and even of the world around you. Becoming a more critical reader doesn’t dampen your enjoyment of all books: it helps you look past the tropes and plot twists, see what an author really cares about in their writing. There’s also a lot of good shit in unexpected places.
So if you’re wanting to push your own boundaries a little, I have three suggestions. Don’t take these as if they’re from some self-held “superior” – I’m yet to fully complete any of them myself. But that doesn’t mean they’re any less of a valid idea against getting out of a genre rut. They can be taken as options unto themselves or steps, as gradual as you make them. Bear in mind that any require a little time of your research – but then what’s a few minutes to thousands of pages?
The Great Big Shelf
What’s easiest first would be finding novels that overlap what you already enjoy with other genres. Within other established genres (such as thriller or supernatural) finding books that do this can be hard when it’s not anything more than romantically inclined; the majority of stories have a love interest, if only to flesh out human relationships and make characters all that more believable.. That’s when that daunting wall dominating your local bookstore comes into play: Fiction, put plain and simple.
Non-genre specific books crossover with plenty of themes popularly attributed to anything pigeon-holed – they just don’t play tropes to their fullest. It’s refreshing to read something that places more focus on a typical person’s perspective rather than the setting and elements that rope you and it into the genre. Books such as Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime and Markus Zusak’s The Messenger focus on the complexities of everyday life between people.
But reading non-specific doesn’t mean giving up on all of those gimmicks of fantasy-esque novels though. Degrees of the supernatural or sci-fi are still prevalent within plenty of books. The protagonist of Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life follows a looping life with every death. Paul Auster’s 1 2 3 4 similarly follows the same protagonist in alternate lives and how they differ from one another. Though arguably more horror/sci-fi, Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach trilogy questions human identity and motive at more personal level than comparable works.
Defining Works
Despite what I’ve said before, you mightn’t have to directly stray from your preferred genre. Going back in time far enough, the change in prose within classic works can be a noticeable enough change. Whilst reading especially older prose can be tedious at times, it’s interesting to see how writing trends have changed. This difference can really help your ability to follow lengthier sentence structures and the tangent-riddled paragraphs of academic pieces.
Equally, visiting the work that helped inspire your favourite writers in the present lets you draw more appreciation of how a genre’s evolved. I for one enjoy seeing how the ideas within fantasy novels overlap with one another; A Game of Thrones bears similarities in world-building and characters to Frank Herbert’s Dune of thirty years previous. Other popular fantasy authors cite Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea series as a childhood muse. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 sits alongside 1984 as the beginning of popular dystopian fiction.
Of course, this isn’t just limited to the one genre. The works of Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters paved the way for romance, with the visible edge of social commentary. Horror classics include the obvious Frankenstein and Dracula, but some might not be familiar with Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray or the short fiction of H P Lovecraft. Exploring classics is a way of seeing where the motive behind a genre came from and why they became so popular.
Acclaimed Titles
In combination of the two previous, you could try any number of critically acclaimed “classics” (because quite a few will be harped on as being so despite age). Whilst some of the works that defined genres can sometimes be too narrow or implicit in discussing social topics, authors from early to mid-century are still discussed as popular reads that openly engage with questioning typical human morality in life. An easy way of finding these could be from any number of ranked booklists in shops or on the internet.
Any kind of ranking should be taken with a pinch of salt, however, in who they’re catering to. For better or worse, Harry Potter won’t leave that shelf in our lifetime. Researching award winners and shortlists is lengthier but bears different fruit. For fiction, the Pulitzer Prize and the Booker Awards are among those chosen without direct ties to bookstores.
Equally, there’s plenty of book awards for genre-fiction (particularly fantasy/sci-fi: the Hugo Award, World Fantasy Award etc.) if you ever want to enjoy what you know best. Yes, awards are esteemed but that doesn’t necessarily mean your own personal connection with the author’s ideas or writing style – but they pick out merit and that’s a starting point.
If being more critical of what you read was the reason to start on different authors and genres, then spending time rediscovering what you do and don’t enjoy isn’t really a waste of time at all.
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