If you’re into fantasy, do you ever pick up a romance and give it a shot? Or read a historical fiction book if you’re into scifi? It’s a leap of faith that doesn’t always work out but when it does it’s pretty sweet.
I asked a friend what her favorite book was, and she said The Goldfinch. I had never heard of it and hadn’t read any fiction/contemporary like it, but it ended up being such a great surprise. It was one of the few 5 star reads of that year and I never would have experienced it if I hadn’t taken the chance.
I’d say every so often, just take a chance. You might be pleasantly surprised.
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Yeah i do i like those challenges sometimes trying to find something out of my comfort zone just i usually avoid genres i don’t like
My favorite genre is fantasy, but lately I have been in a romance shtick which is new for me. Reading an modern urban fantasy right now and that is a little weird for me. I will also read nonfiction sometimes if it’s a topic I am interested in learning more about.
Yes, all the time!
I try to pick a topic I want to become familiar with, or a genre I want to learn more about, and try to explore it. So I often end up buying a lot of primary sources that are a bit beyond me, and it takes a bit of background research before I can get anything out of them.
For instance, I read “Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen” by Liliʻuokalani (because how can you pass up that title?). I got so little out of it, because I didn’t understand Hawai’ian history. OK, so I go out and read the history book “Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands” by Gavan Daws. OK, I understand the political situation it took place in, but am 99% sure I’m missing out on a lot of cultural contexts and Daws is too. So I read “Kamehameha and His Warrior Kekūhaupiʻo” by Stephen Desha, which is a serialized account of the rise of the Hawai’ian monarchy meant to educate Hawai’ian people on their history but it’s a bit TOO Hawai’ian for me, so I have to get Nānā I Ke Kumu, Helu ʻEkahi/Look To The Source Volume I, which helps with interpretation of cultural context. And NOW I feel like I’m maybe prepared enough to loop back around and read Liliʻuokalani’s diaries, which cover the same time period as “Hawaii’s Story By Hawaii’s Queen” but give behind-the-scenes details.
Not really lmao
I’ve been disappointed so many times by books of my favourite genres (Sword and Sorcery, Fantasy, Gothic Horror, Classic Ghost Stories ((that might not be a genre)), Historical Fiction, and Weird Fiction) that at this stage I will just read whichever book somebody decides to throw at me.
All the time. Started with book club and kept going aftet that. I often get pleasantly surprised with books I would have never considered when I was younger.
When i was younger my friends would recommend a lot of ya novels and while I do think some are very nice majority of them just aren’t my taste. I’ve kinda stopped taking my friends recommendations because of this and don’t really try and read any anymore.
I started reading a Rush Limbaugh book once. I think I’d rather have my kneecaps shotgunned.
I had a similar experience with Jordan Peterson.
There is nothing wrong with reading just for entertainment or relaxation. However, it’s an important value to me that I read to better myself, whether learning through nonfiction, empathy through personal tales or other cultures, or just abstractly through postmodern or erdogic literature.
As such, my “comfort zone” has shifted over time. I would say that Vonnegut is now well within my comfort zone, and that Pynchon and Faulkner are just outside it. This year I read Lot 49 by the former and Sanctuary by the latter, and both were very managable reads, by their standards.
Last year I read through The Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Inferno, and Paradise Lost, and now feel that almost no archaic prose is beyond me. But next year will push out into Canterbury Tales and Pilgrim’s Progress.
I should but no
I don’t like non-fiction. I occasionally pick up non-fiction books. I read like 10 pages and give up. The most I’ve read was Sapiens and I read up until about half of it. I just can’t keep my focus on them, I fall asleep or become too hyper to continue. There are books I’m super interested in but I just know I won’t read more than a third of it tops.
However, anything fiction, from romance to sci-fi to classics, I can read. Very rarely do I dnf any fiction book, and that’s when either it’s written too poorly or the translation is bs.
Have you tried more journalistic/prose nonfiction? In Cold Blood by Truman Capote Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the Emperor of All Maladies, Killers of the Flower Moon. They read much more like novels.
You might try listening to them instead. I find that some non-fiction, especially science based ones, are better to listen to because the terminology will sometimes trip me up and slow my reading rate which affects how well I follow the book and how much concentration the read takes. Audiobooks solve that problem and I enjoy the book.
Good question. No, LOL, I never read outside of my comfort zone. Although it’s ok because my comfort zone is pretty wild.
Totally. I don’t like to limit myself when it comes to genres, but there are definitely some that I pick up more than others. I’ve done the StoryGraph genre challenge the last couple years to help me with this and it’s been fantastic.
I will read any genre if the premise sounds good, and I’m willing to put down any book that doesn’t grab me.
I try to. I have fairly diverse reading interests, as is, but this year I picked up the Heartstopper graphic novel series. I am generally not a romance fan, but it was just cute, and (reasonably, but not completely) light, which is what I needed.
I took this year to try and read only books by marginalized authors (POC, LGBT+, disabled etc.) and it allowed me to find a few new authors I want to keep following, and actually get around to books that have been on my TBR list for years.