Focus on Reading - Week 38 - Themes and Tropes

[Booknblues]

With the year 1/3 of the way through what recurrent themes and tropes are you finding in your reading?
Is this purposeful with your interest or more by accident?

[Meli]

I just checked what I have read so far and my reading is totally all over the place! No common themes or tropes necessarily that I can grasp off the top of my head. I'm reading non-fiction, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, novellas, some tbr, some library borrows, mostly physical books but at least an audio per month.

This is the year of challenging myself to chip away at the tbr (a never-ending quest), and read whatever my book clubs are reading.

[Jen K]

A good number of my April reads included people in jail, only one was an intentional detective read.

The Women's Prize books that I read had a theme of mental illness and to some extent anthropomorphism- books (if you include the book in The Sentence) and a fig tree.

[Robin P]

One of my themes is "historical". My favorite mysteries are historical, my favorite romances are historical, my favorite literary fiction books are historical. It's just so much more interesting when the context changes - plus everything can't be resolved with a phone call or internet search.

I like books where many of the characters are basically good people, trying to make the best of their situations. Some authors who do this are Nevil Shute and Carla Kelly, also Station Eleven is like that. On the other hand, I don't like books where everyone is awful, like Gone Girl. or anything where I have to read the POV of a psychopath.

But a gleeful "bad" character is fine, such as a thief or rascal. I adore the young hero of The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue, though others may find him whiny and unpleasant. I have always loved Emma, a heroine that even Jane Austen thought few people would like.

I tend to like long books where I can be immersed in a world, or series, which can be like one long book.

I've read several books with environmental themes this year, including Disappearing Earth, Above the Waterfall, Migrations, How High We Go in the Dark, but I read them all in spite of that, not because of it.

[Sallys]

Historical fiction or non, female protagonist, family drama

[Theresa]

I definitely had a planned theme for 2022 - - reading at least one 'next in series' book in series I have read before and have enjoyed but have gotten seriously behind in over the last few years of doing challenges to diversify my reading. I actually made out a list to chip away at! At least 95% of these are crime fiction with the rest romances. So far i have been steadily working down the list at least one every month. I'm hoping that once I finish with Popsugar 2022 Challenge -- only about 10 books to go -- I'll dig deeper into those series, maybe even get caught up in a few.

I did completely fall down a rabbit hole which I think I discussed in Kaffeeklastch recently: trees, books with a significant tree or two in them. It all started in January when I read Lab Girl. Several books after that happened to have a tree of significance in it - or in the case of The House in the Cerulean Sea earth and forest sprites and a garden gnome all busy growing trees and gardens and such. Only one book did I actually seek out to re=read because I remembered it had a sequence about climbing redwoods in it that was just glorious. That's expanded a bit to include special gardens -- such as the one in Dune. But gardens are someting I tend to note anyway, and often influence why I pick up a certain mystery or romance.

There are themes I gravitate to, especially with mystery and romance genre fiction - food and cooking, gardens, set in Paris or Istanbul, art, artisans, and craft, come to the top of my mind.

[Holly R W]

For the past few years, I've enjoyed noticing unconscious themes that come up in the books I read. As I had talked about with Theresa, that all started the year I kept noticing that trees were featured in many of the books I read. I called it "My Year of Trees".

This year so far, I haven't noticed anything so sweeping as to match that. However, I read two books back to back recently that featured trail-blazing women cooks in the early 1960's. Coincidentally, I read these stories while watching a dramatic series about Julia Child on HBO Max.

[Booknblues]

This year my themes seemed to be all over the place, unintentionally, but it seemed I was having several repeating themes, so wanted to check.

I don't generally pick up books with a "family story" but family was a recurring theme in my reading this year.

Ethnic and sexual identity were other strong themes.

Nature and respect for nature was a recurrent theme and that is one which is often found in my reading.

Many of my books had themes of good characteristics vs evil characteristics as a theme. Good - loyalty, fidelity,honesty, determination, courage. Evil - disloyalty, dishonesty , infidelity, cowardliness.

Issues of prejudice also were themes.

And Conflict and war which is typical for my reading.