When you walk into a bookstore, odds are the first thing you’d do is go straight to a specific shelf. For me, that self used to be in the Young Adult section. Now, it’s the Fantasy section. This is because my favourite genre is, without a doubt, fantasy. So I tend to gravitate toward those books, because in the end, I know I’d get the most enjoyment out of it. But is this a problem?

Most people have a favourite genre. This can fall under some of the great umbrella terms of Romance, Fantasy, Thriller, Contemporary or YA. This could also mean that you have a genre that you actively avoid. For me this is the Thriller genre. I can’t really say why, half of the time it’s because I find thrillers to be printed in thick, dense fonts that gave me a headache. The other half is because I can see the twists coming from a mile away, but I’m generalizing here.

Undoubtedly we have tried reading different books in the beginning, but at some point it can get narrowed down as we discover what’s best for our tastes. But I’m here to tell you to try again. You never know, you may have been missing out on discovering a part of you that loves the technicalities of police procedural crime novels.

For those who tend to stick to the same genre and want to venture out a bit, try exploring the sub-genres of your favourite genres first.

Genres can be very fluid and contain elements from other genres. So, if you like that time-travel aspect in your science fiction, give historical time travel a try, who knows? You may just discover that Arthurian fiction is your jam, and you can become a history buff.

.

Here is a chart created by Pop Chart Labs that can help you expand you wander out of your reading comfort zone and find your next good read.

“Good writing is good writing. In many ways, it’s the audience and their expectations that define a genre. A reader of literary fiction expects the writing to illuminate the human condition, some aspect of our world and our role in it. A reader of genre fiction likes that, too, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of the story.” 

― Rosemary Clement-Moore