December 2010 Genre Suggestions!

[MrsJoseph]

Its that time of month again :-). Julie just reminded me that we need to get to picking some genre's for the next set of books (we'll start reading the next set of books in Jan.

Keep in mind that we are picking genres and books this month to start reading in January. Our next free dates to start new book discussions are January 14th or Jan 21st. In order to get at least 4 full weeks of reading for everyone for each book, we need to pick both genres and books no later than Dec 24th.

Let me know if that's an issue.

[rosie]

Could you explain what you mean by "novel?"

Given the other specific genres, it's a bit vague. Do you mean classics (which I would really love to have added to the poll options)? Chic lit? Traditional/popular fiction?

The majority of the books we'll be reading are novels, and the other topics listed are largely novel genres. If you could clarify what it is meant to mean and modify the poll accordingly, we can be sure that people are voting for the genres they'd most prefer to read. Thanks!

[MrsJoseph]

I'm sorry! I was a lit major in college & my professors had a particular why of defining genres.

Almost all books are "genres" with the exception of certian fiction books. These would be books like "The Lady and the Unicorn" www.amazon.com/Lady-Unicorn-Novel-Tracy-Chevalier/dp/0452285453/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1291315210&sr=1-1 or "Girl with a Pearl Earring."

These types of books are sorta in the middle - they get smushed into a genre like "romance" (which they are not but there is some romance there) or "drama" (which it has but is not all drama). In my classes we started to classify the books that don't really fall into a real "genre" catagory as "novels."

Most of the time a "novel" would be a book that is more of a life story than what is considered actual genre fiction. One great example of this difference is this definition I found online:
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Genre (popular)fiction is plot driven and attracts a broad audience. It may fall into any category, such as mystery, romance, science fiction, etc. Bestselling genre authors would be John Grisham, Sidney Sheldon, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Michael Connelly, Janet Evanovich, Danielle Steel, among others.

Literary fiction is character driven and appeals to a smaller, more intellectual audience. A work of literary fiction may fall into any of the genres. However, what sets it apart are such things as excellent writing and originality of thought and style that raise it above ordinary writing. Examples of literary fiction: Cold Mountain, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Grapes of Wrath. Popular authors of literary fiction would be John LeCarre, Barbara Kingsolver, and Toni Morrison, among others.

The more narrowly defined categories of popular fiction that appeal to specific audiences are classified as genre fiction.
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So, I could remove "novel" and exchange it for 'Literary fiction' but I am nervous that ppl will get that confused with books like "Moby Dick" which would be more of a classic.

[rosie]

Thank you for the explanation! It was confusing to me (which means it probably was for others as well), but your response definitely helped a lot. Maybe you could change "novel" to "literary fiction" or add a short parenthetical description and also add "Classics" as a new category...I'm sure that's not considered a genre to the academic literary world, but for our purposes it would be nice to be able to vote for them as a specific category.

[tiffani]

I vote for a classics category too.

[rosie]

*tap tap*

Pretty please, mods? I haven't placed my vote for next month's genres yet because I am waiting to see if Classics will be added to the poll since at least two of us have interest in it. I think that'd be fair. Thanks in advance!