Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
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Genres!
Will the sub-genres be able to have their own sub-genres? I ask because Romance currently has Erotica and Menage as sub-genres when Menage should really be under Erotica.
As far as I can tell you can keep going down sub-genres as far as you like.
Here's a genre-specific question I have: at the moment, comics is listed as a dup of graphic-novels; is that right, or should it be a sub-genre?
And here's a more general policy thought: it seems to me that the best way to review sub- and dup- in genres is to make everything a sub-genre at first, then sort it out. Once you list something as a dup, it doesn't seem that there's any way to view it separately (is there?), so it's hard to tell how the names might be different.
Cait wrote: "Here's a genre-specific question I have: at the moment, comics is listed as a dup of graphic-novels; is that right, or should it be a sub-genre?"That's a tricky one, and it probably depends a lot on how people are using the terms. I mean, my first inclination is to leave it the way it is, with comics as a duplicate of graphic-novels. Then I start thinking (which is a dangerous pastime, I know).
Some people are probably using "comics" to indicate collections of things like Peanuts or Calvin & Hobbes, and they use "graphic-novels" to indicate the bound collections of individual comic books like X-Men or Superman.
However, those types of distinctions may not warrant an actual separation or distinction. The general usage is most likely going to be synonymous.
Properly, "graphic novel" should only refer to something that was originally designed and published as a single work, not collected series of comics.
Well, we need some kind of ur-genre to hold "fiction made of artwork" -- currently that's graphic-novels, but I suppose we could make a graphic-novels-and-comics and then make graphic-novels and comics each a sub-genre of it...but that seems awfully complicated, if the lists of books shelved as graphic-novel and as comics overlap substantially (which shows that most users see them as the same genre).I suppose it's a difference of what's correct in theory vs what's crowdsource asserted in practice.
Scott wrote: "Properly, "graphic novel" should only refer to something that was originally designed and published as a single work, not collected series of comics."Properly, perhaps so. General usage here and elsewhere suggests otherwise, however. Just looking at the items shelved as "graphic novel" here nets me items originally designed and published as single works, "collection" volumes like Avengers, vol. 1 which pull together several individual comic book issues that make up part or all of a specific story arc, and a variety of manga tankouban (generally translated) which are, once again, compilation works.
Unless we're talking at cross-purposes, of course. By "collected series of comics" are you referring to things like X-Men/Batman/etc or are you referring to things like Peanuts/Calvin & Hobbes? The first I would shelve/label as graphic novels. The second I would put under comics. I do not use the terms synonymously.
Cait wrote: "Well, we need some kind of ur-genre to hold "fiction made of artwork" -- currently that's graphic-novels, but I suppose we could make a graphic-novels-and-comics and then make graphic-novels and co..."I suppose that "sequential art" is both too hoity-toity and also doesn't see enough actual use in shelving practices on GR. It would neatly cover graphic novels, comics, and manga, but likely at the expense of general usability.
My personal shelf is "comics-and-graphic-novels," covers everything. By collection I meant any collected volume of work originally published in serial format, such as monthly comic books or newspaper strips. For example, Batman: The Dark Knight Archives, Vol. 1 wouldn't be a graphic novel, but Batman: Arkham Asylum would be.
Anki wrote: "I suppose that "sequential art" is both too hoity-toity and also doesn't see enough actual use in shelving practices on GR. It would neatly cover graphic novels, comics, and manga, but likely at the expense of general usability."Ooh, you are right. On both points, alas, because it would be a great way to organize it! There is a sequential-art shelf not yet placed in the hierarchy:
http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/s...
Ah-hah, I have figured out how to see single-name breakdowns of duplicate genre names:http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/graphic-novels
http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/comics
Doesn't cover the other dups, though (graphic-novel, graphicnovels, etc.). Still, useful as a check. (And it would be nice to see a generated list of dups on a genre with links to the individual shelves, yeah? Has anyone figured out a way to go from genre to its list of dups?)
1. I think we should not mark genres with completely different names as duplicates. As some have mentioned, graphic novels may have somewhat different connotations than comics or manga. The duplicate field was really meant for abbreviations or alternate spellings.2. I also don't think we should use shelves that span multiple genres in the hierarchy. For example, if one person has graphic-novels-and-manga and another person has graphic-novels-and-comics, how will we decide the parent genre? I think we should leave those shelves without parents. They can still be found in the master list: http://www.goodreads.com/genres/list
I think the difference between what is theoretically correct and what is used in crowdsourcing is often very different, and will likely cause some problems at first. For instance, there's a substantial difference between romance, erotical romance and erotica. Technically menage fiction could fall under all three, but in practice it seems most people file it under erotica (I personally file it under erotical romance when there's a Happy Ending for all persons involved, under erotica when there's an occasional threesome).I'm assuming subgenres can't be subs to different main genres? For instance, historical romance is technically a subgenre of both romance and historical fiction.
Mod
No, they can't.
rivka wrote: "Jan wrote: "I'm assuming subgenres can't be subs to different main genres?"No, they can't."
Ah sigh. This has the potential to get very messy indeed :p
Mod
Mayanka wrote: "1. I think we should not mark genres with completely different names as duplicates. As some have mentioned, graphic novels may have somewhat different connotations than comics or manga. The duplica..."Those are both good points, Mayanka. Hmm. Now I'm leaning back toward "sequential-art" as a top genre for graphic novels and comics....
I would love to see a genre for maps, aka cartography. Also one for geography. Possibly both could be under non-fiction, but I personally think they'd be easier to find if they were both under Science (separately). I also think that psychology and anthropology should each be under Science.
I put science as a sub-genre of non-fiction and added cartography (with sub-genre maps) and geography to science. I do think that some of the other non-fiction genres could be moved to under science; does anyone have hierarchy thoughts on non-fiction->specifics versus non-fiction->science->specifics? I'm inclined to move anthropology, psychology, and sociology from the current non-fiction list, and I'm sure there are others. (Physics? Astronomy? Math?) Or would a Social Sciences genre be a better intermediary?
Canonical form for multi-word genres: I propose that we use the form with spaces instead of the form without (eg, popularscience is a duplicate of popular-science, not the other way around). This seems more readable to me.
Translations: do we mark them as duplicates? I vote no. Non-duplication allows for genre descriptions in various languages and keeps the imposition of English on non-English-speaking users to a minimum; it also keeps nuances in cases where the genre may mean somewhat different concepts in different languages.
Mod
Mayanka wrote: "2. I also don't think we should use shelves that span multiple genres in the hierarchy. For example, if one person has graphic-novels-and-manga and another person has graphic-novels-and-comics, how will we decide the parent genre? I think we should leave those shelves without parents. They can still be found in the master list: http://www.goodreads.com/genres/list "Would SF/Fantasy belong in the same category? If you're looking in a bookstore, the sections are usually merged. Should there be a parent that combines the two genres and then make the pure genres listed as sub-genres?
Cait wrote: "I do think that some of the other non-fiction genres could be moved to under science; does anyone have hierarchy thoughts on non-fiction->specifics versus non-fiction->science->specifics? I'm inclined to move anthropology, psychology, and sociology from the current non-fiction list, and I'm sure there are others. (Physics? Astronomy? Math?) "I wouldn't include math under a general science category. I'd rather see it be a category all it's own.
I wouldn't put anthropology, psychology, and sociology in the same bin with chemistry, physics, and astronomy. I'd tend to put anthropology, psychology, and sociology along with health and medicine. Hard sciences versus humanistic sciences.
The same would apply to SF/F for consistency's sake, IMO.
Re: 26, The general categories would probably be something like "natural sciences", "social sciences" and "humanities". Unfortunately some disciplines cross over: psychology tends to be more natural science than social science, while anthropology contains both depending on whether you do cultural anthropology or physical anthropology.I'm not sure if anyone has noticed, but a genre can be both a main shelf and a sub-shelf at the same time. Science fiction is listed in the main shelf list (because it is a fundamental/major genre) but it is also (logically) a descendant of Fiction.
Personally, I would leave Comics as a main shelf, and put Graphic Novels, Manga, and Comic Strips as all subgenres, but that's me. (This would mean removing Manga and Graphic Novels from the main list).
Science fiction/fantasy is an interesting conundrum. Should the be grouped into a single category to start or listed separately as they are now? If they are grouped, what is the best term? Speculative Fiction? Would that confuse people not familiar with the term? Probably would need to go with the more "traditional" Science Fiction and Fantasy if we went that route.
I'm not sure if Crime deserves to be in the main genre list, but on the other hand I'm not sure where it would go...it's really not a subgenre of Mystery (although some treat it that way).
This Is Not The Michael You're Looking For wrote: "Personally, I would leave Comics as a main shelf, and put Graphic Novels, Manga, and Comic Strips as all subgenres, but that's me. (This would mean removing Manga and Graphic Novels from the main list)."Me too. I have a comics shelf that includes graphic novels and traditional comics a la The Far Side.
This is going to be tough as we all use Goodreads so differently.
And, I guess there is no solution for books that are both fiction and non-fiction?
![[ JT ] | 51 comments](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1253302100p1/2641450.jpg)
Speculative Fiction covers Science Fiction, Fantasy, as well as Horror (I think Alternative History is also included). I think it would be a good umbrella for those genres, personally.Is "crime" a non-fiction category? I'm thinking of the "True Crime" genre we had when I worked at Borders. It was located with the non-fiction.
I'm not quite sure how I feel about Graphic Novels, Manga, and Comics (etc). I personally separate the 3 in my mind, but I'm not sure what I would consider the "top level" to be... Sometimes I think of it as Graphical Fiction, but that is kind of clunky and I don't know if anyone else thinks of it in such terms.
Mod
While I agree, I share NT Michael's concern about confusing users.
This Is Not The Michael You're Looking For wrote: "Re: 26, The general categories would probably be something like "natural sciences", "social sciences" and "humanities"."Those are probably better picks. "Humanistic sciences" didn't sound like the right term, but at the time I couldn't think of a better alternative.
Amanda (JT) wrote: "Speculative Fiction covers Science Fiction, Fantasy, as well as Horror (I think Alternative History is also included). I think it would be a good umbrella for those genres, personally."
I'm good with that hierarchy. If "science fiction", "fantasy", and "horror" are all also top-level genres, it shouldn't matter that they're grouped under "speculative fiction" rather than "fiction". Even if "speculative fiction" is a lesser recognized term.
Amanda (JT) wrote: "Speculative Fiction covers Science Fiction, Fantasy, as well as Horror (I think Alternative History is also included). I think it would be a good umbrella for those genres, personally."I'm good with that hierarchy. If "science fiction", "fantasy", and "horror" are all also top-level genres, it shouldn't matter that they're grouped under "speculative fiction" rather than "fiction". Even if "speculative fiction" is a lesser recognized term.
Hmmm. I'm against grouping those genres away from the main genres list though. Technically everything can be shelved under either fiction or non-fiction, and it seems strange to me that they would be grouped so broadly.
I think enough people differentiate between the two (three or more?) genres to allow them to be shown separately and load the correct books.
The whole idea behind the genres page was to display genres, lets not hide them behind broad generalisations.
They are they whole reason the genres page came into existence
This Is Not The Michael You're Looking For wrote: "I'm not sure if Crime deserves to be in the main genre list, but on the other hand I'm not sure where it would go...it's really not a subgenre of Mystery (although some treat it that way). "I was thinking about that too, Michael. Most of the books in the category are mostly mysteries but then it has 'True Crime' as a sub-genre which should be non-fiction.
mlady_rebecca wrote: "Would SF/Fantasy belong in the same category? If you're looking in a bookstore, the sections are usually merged. Should there be a parent that combines the two genres and then make the pure genres listed as sub-genres? "That makes sense to me. There's already a SF/F shelf, so all we'll have to do is put the individual shelves of sci-fi and fantasy under it.
Lisa wrote: "And, I guess there is no solution for books that are both fiction and non-fiction?"Well, it's not a problem for books per se, since books can be in multiple genres. If someone had a shelf for books-which-contain-both-fiction-and-non-fiction, we would have trouble turning that shelf into a genre in the fiction/non-fiction hierarchy, but if someone shelved a book fiction and also shelved it non-fiction, no problems there.
Specific genre question: There's currently a hierarchy of fantasy->paranormal->supernatural. Should paranormal and supernatural be in that order? My inclination would be to make supernatural the catch-all genre here, and have paranormal, werewolves, vampires, etc., listed below supernatural.http://www.goodreads.com/genres/paran...
I wouldn't do it. It seems like some people are using 'supernatural' the same way as 'paranormal' but Paranormal is the most popular term (pretty much the same books are shelved under both.) The first book shelved under both genres is Twilight with 647 in paranormal but 264 in supernatural so if one has to be on top, I'd say it should be paranormal.
While I know that country-specific literature is not exactly a "genre", but this is used a lot to classify books. At the same time, all these books belong to a real genre.So George Orwell's 1984 can as well be shelved as "science-fiction" as well as "english-literature" or the like. And obviously, I don't want to make "english-literature" as a sub-genre of "science-fiction" because this is plain wrong.
I therefore would suggest to create an uber-genre like "country-specific-literature" in order to classify them sensibly.
Any other thoughts?
Hi all -- We've added librarian logs for the new genre fields on shelves. Hope this helps keep track of the madness!
Thanks!
Mod
That's fine -- books can show up in multiple genres, and will.
Thanks, Mayanka!
I think paranormal and supernatural have the same technical definition, but are used differently, so I would keep Paranormal on top and Supernatural as a sub-genre. (I consider Paranormal to be the catch-all, but Supernatural to be primarily about demons/ghosts/spirits, but of course YMMV)
I think a lot of people are using "paranormal" to mean "paranormal romance", which is currently listed as a sub-genre of romance (where I think it belongs). I've edited the description on paranormal a little to reflect the inclusion of supernatural as a sub-genre, which makes me feel happier about the order now. :)
For now, I'd put supernatural and paranormal next to each other, rather than one within the other. Neither is all encompassing because they are virtually synonyms, with the difference extremely subtle. (Paranormal is something unexplainable by normal experience/knowledge, Supernatural is something beyond natural laws). Actually, a better choice would probably be to synonymize [sic?] them as "Supernatural and Paranormal" and be done with it. Keep in mind that Paranormal Romance is actually more of a Romance subgenre than a Paranormal subgenre; when users use one to mean the other...well, that's part of the challenge of GoodReads shelves. The problem with "Crime Fiction" (ignore True Crime for a moment) is that technically speaking it is a field of fiction which looks at things from the criminal point of view. This is often lumped in with Mystery, but may have no mystery element to it at all (e.g., Ocean's 11 is a Crime movie, but it is not a Mystery). Most people using that term on GoodReads are probably using it as equivalent to Mystery, however.
Overall, though, I'm simply impressed with the new system. I suspect it will work rather well to group most books into their major categories (the way someone browsing for a book at a bookstore would search and don't anticipate a huge amount of infighting among librarians and users over the more minor details, particularly since a book can simultaneously be in dozens of different planes in the hierarchy if it is so tagged.
Okay, I'm going to break graphic-novels and comics out under a sequential-art genre for now while we ponder them:http://www.goodreads.com/genres/seque...
I also took this out of the "fiction" hierarchy, since comics aren't always fiction.
rivka wrote: "Eiseli wrote: "So George Orwell's 1984 can as well be shelved as "science-fiction" as well as "english-literature" or the like."That's fine -- books can show up in multiple genres, and will.
rivka, my point was not what you are quoting. I was referring to the hierarchy. I cannot put english-literature as a child of science-fiction or science-fiction as a child of english-literature. I need a container for all those english-literature, german-literature, french-literature but I'm not sure about what to take or what to create.
Eiseli, why not just put them under fiction?
This Is Not The Michael You're Looking For wrote: "For now, I'd put supernatural and paranormal next to each other, rather than one within the other. Neither is all encompassing because they are virtually synonyms, with the difference extremely subtle...."Agreed. I would put them at the same level.
Goodreads Librarians Group
Books mentioned in this topic
Batman: The Dark Knight Archives, Vol. 1 (other topics)Batman: Arkham Asylum - A Serious House on Serious Earth (other topics)
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/5...
Who's got thoughts on genre hierarchies and genre duplicates?