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23 February 2010

Out on a Limb in crime fiction

When I ran last week's poll asking how many people would admit to confining their reading to a single genre I certainly didn't expect to find myself sitting out on a limb!

That's me on my lonesome at Only one, and the rest at more than one!

Many of the poll participants commented that while their preference is for crime fiction, they also read other genres such as historical, science fiction, fantasy, horror, thrillers,

I took heart at Deb's comment:
I read across all genres--with, of course, crime/mystery fiction being my favorite. A few years ago, I read Jane Smiley's 13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT A NOVEL in which she says that all novels are at heart mystery novels because something unknown is always being uncovered. I love that quote.

I tend to agree that mystery lies at the heart of most fiction - solving a puzzle seems to me to be the main reason why we read.

This comment from readerbuzz set me thinking too: I like to create my own genre names: Moving-and-Starting-Over...Books About Books...and, the current favorite, Yearlong Challenges That Started Out as Blog Posts and Built Into a Book From Which a Movie Was Later Made....

Thanks for participating in the poll everyone. It certainly had me thinking about my own addiction! And also about whether I tend to think I read solely crime fiction when in fact I read other genres too, and just don't recognise the fact. Maybe we'll analyse what I call crime fiction one day. I do know that when I occasionally venture outside what I call crime fiction, I think why am I wasting my time on this!

4 comments:

  1. Kerrie - I love that comment - "Mystery lies at the heart of most fiction." I, for one, am in awe of your considerable knowledge of crime fiction, so if that's your genre, more power to you : ).

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  2. Recently I've been wondering just how to define crime fiction, so I'm interested to see your definition.

    Last week I thought I'd overdosed on crime fiction but when I looked at the other genres I realised that all are based on a dilemma of some sort and I couldn't find one book that was crime/mystery free. The more I think about the more blurred the boundaries become.

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  3. I confine myself almost entirely to mysteries and very occasionally non-fiction.

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  4. Glad to have someone else sitting on the limb with me Joe

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