Making Progress--and a Meme

[shalanna]

"Book report": I think I'm making progress. The revisions make the book more of an obvious paranormal. While I thought at first that I might be making the book cheesier and more genre-bound, I came to accept that as okay when I realized that perhaps no one would want to read it if it remained a literary novel that was mostly style. (I like to read stuff like that, as witness one of my favorite books being Gail Godwin's _The Odd Woman_, which has lots and LOTS of style, but not too many people do, it turns out. Wake-up call!)
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This brings me to a few questions that form a new meme. I thought it was about time it got propagated.

Which genre(s) do you read? Do you EVER read "mainstream" fiction? "Literary" fiction? The classics? (I guess I mean here did you like them when you read them in school, and do you go back to re-read them? My example is that I go back to read _To Kill a Mockingbird_ and _The Great Gatsby_ regularly. These two novels are the books I would like to be able to write. Maybe someday. I also re-read _A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_ and _The Secret History_ now and then, but they're sorta guilty pleasures.)

Does Oprah's Club or some other source of recommendations (Amazon reviews, a particular weblog's reviews, et al) ever have influence on you? What are some good websites for reviews? Is word of mouth more important than the stuff you read coming from the publicity machine? (For me, it's all word of mouth. I tend to give the fish eye to stuff that's hyped too heavily.)

Do you prefer to read novels or short stories? Or nonfiction? Memoir? Instruction manuals? LiveJournals of people you find interesting? (grin) (Novels and LJs.)

I'd love to hear your answers to these questions.
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tiellan wrote that most of what she reads is spec fic, yet most of what she writes comes out more "mainstream." That was true of me several years ago. I was trying to write speculative fiction and fantasy (old-school fantasy, not contemporary and paranormal romance stuff) because that was what hubby likes and what my friends liked to read. I was in a critique group made up of close friends from college who had for a long time been into fandom, the SCA, SF conventions, etc. They basically didn't read anything else. I was a misfit there because I came from a background of reading more widely. I was also moving away from fantasy and toward different styles, such as the mainstream/chick lit, those mysteries, and the urban fantasy.

Basically, I'll read just about anything if the writing is good and the characters appeal to me . . . the exception may be horror/gorepunk and really SAD stuff like stories about a child being kidnapped and killed or a plane full of people crashing into the ocean (because I just can't take the sobbing and crying stuff any more, at my age. I get too much of that on TV news already.) I teethed on Jean Kerr, Peg Bracken, James Thurber, and especially Robert Benchley. (He was also an old-timey movie star! Part of the Algonquin Round Table! Knew Dorothy Parker personally! Some of his stuff is not as hilarious when I read it now as when I was in junior high, but he's still really funny.) My parents had these humorists' work on their shelves, and so it was easy to get into it. Later, Erma Bombeck and Dave Barry joined my line-up of must-buys. But I also have read in just about every genre except erotica/romantica.
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I want to thank my volunteer readers here AGAIN for making me once again aware of the DIFFERENT ways in which each of us reads! Other people read differently and get a different picture. For some, description is anathema; a few skip over it or skim it and miss inconsistencies because they aren't really "listening," while others really pay a lot of attention to it and can get concerned when a character seems to have been described two different ways. Some like to read funny stuff, and others don't share the same sense of humor. Some even like puns! (Quelle horreur!) I tend to FORGET this, and I need to be reminded now and then.
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"Ignorance killed the cat...curiosity was framed." -- C.J.Cherryh, _Tripoint_

Comments

[peake.livejournal.com]

Which genre(s) do you read? Do you EVER read "mainstream" fiction? "Literary" fiction? The classics?

By my understanding of 'mainstream' and 'literary' - yes. In fact they probably take up a good third of my fiction reading - and probably 50% of what I choose to read. (Reviews and Award reading mean that a good 30% of the books I read are dictated by others.) Though best of all I do like literary fiction that flirts with the fantastic, as opposed to straight mimetic fiction.

'Classics' (another term open to interpretation) tend to be books I keep meaning to read but rarely get around to - unless I can find some extraneous reason for it, such as research.

Genres - I read science fiction, fantasy (though generally not 'generic' fantasy, so I suppose a better term might be 'the fantastic' - boy this is a linguistic minefield), some crime (generally if it has 'literary' overtones, like Chabon's The Final Solution or Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn), and some historical fiction (ditto).

As for writing, the little I do always starts off as overtly generic (usually sf, sometimes fantasy) then drifts off towards the mainstream, sometimes to such an extent that the generic origin is almost completely lost.