Allison Symes's Blog - Posts Tagged "combining-genres"

I've never understood snobbery around genre fiction. Genre fiction encourages people to read according to their tastes and isn't the idea to get people into books in the first place?

My favourite genres include:-

1. Fantasy
2. Crime
3. Historical

(And yes you can combine those. Terry Pratchett's Sam Vimes novels in his Discworld series combines 1 and 2 and I'm sure you can think of others that blend genres).

I suppose the only "properly literary" fiction I've read is Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, which I adored, but my go-to-for-a-good-read first is always something which is genre based.

Yes, I know what to expect from, say, a crime novel, but what is fascinating is seeing how different crime writers handle their material. (As a writer, I can pick up tips there myself so win-win!).

I'm always fascinated as well by character creation and different writers take varying approaches to this. So reading widely across genres opens my eyes to different ways that this can be done.

So reading books then is a good idea then? Well of course it is!

Now to decide which genre I'm going to go for next...

Happy reading!