Tag: sci-fi

Stay Away Genres

John Guillen28 Comments

Don’t confuse this with me asking you to tell me which genres you think are “worse” than others. Because I don’t believe that to be the case with any two genres. Think of this as genres that you simply don’t read.

I have many to choose from. Literary fiction. Sci-fi. Fantasy. YA. Horror. And probably a bunch I can’t think of. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with any of these. I just don’t have any interest in reading them. I mean, I’ve read from all of those at least once. And I’m sure I’ve read good books in each one, but my reading heart and soul will likely always lie in crime fiction. There are so many crime shows on TV that do absolutely no justice to the genre. They always have the right answer. They catch on to things that no one else would. They solve EVERY case. One of my favorite things about crime fiction is that it’s much more realistic even though it is also fiction. The detectives are constantly torn about what to do. They don’t solve every case. They don’t have every answer.

Crime shows are always going to be on the air. And I’m sure they make their networks plenty of money. But crime fiction is simply better, and I don’t think any other genre is going to be taking my top spot any time soon. Probably not ever.

Do you have any genres that you just have no interest in reading?

On this day in 2014 I published Everyone has That one Novel in Them…Or do They?.

 

Recommending Books

John Guillen78 Comments

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I’ve written posts about all things books. Writing. Reading. Publishing. And just general news. The one thing I’ve tried stay away from doing is actively recommending books. I’ve written a few posts about the books I’ve read this year from the Amazon 100 Books Everyone Should Read List, but even then I don’t think I recommended any of those to my readers.

You may be wondering why I try not to recommend books. Well, because there is no “if you liked this, then you’ll definitely like this.” Just because you did doesn’t mean I will. For example, most of you know that I’m obsessed with Katniss and all things THG, and yes I would recommend those three books to anyone, no matter what they say their genre of choice is because I think those books transcend the YA dystopian genre, but those are the only ones.

I won’t tell you that if you enjoy reading crime novels that you should read every book on my shelf since it’s about 90% detective fiction. I won’t tell you to read my most recent read because I liked it so much. One thing I’ll  never do is gift someone a book. Because what the heck do I know about their reading habits? Nothing.

One other quick example. I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. I thought it was a great book, but it doesn’t mean I’m suddenly going to buy all of his previous books or that I’m going to delve deeper into YA. I don’t think either of those is going to happen right now. I read what I read and if it happens to be mystery or YA or sci-fi, then so be it. No single book or recommendation will be changing that.

If you’re wondering, the one book that doesn’t belong in a series that I’d recommend to any person is Anne Frank. But that’s it.