About Books

All About Romance put up an interesting blog post a few days ago about genre fiction and book clubs. The post talks about how one woman in the club gets apologetic about some of her reading choices.

This post made me think of a newspaper story that I wrote a few years ago about some book clubs in my area — and the fact that almost all of them were reading literary fiction and nonfiction. Books that I had never heard of. Books that I would probably never read in a million years. Oh, there were a few popular fiction authors in there, but not many.

Now, to each their own and all that, especially when it comes to books. We all have different tastes, after all. But at one point, I remember thinking, you guys are reading these books for fun? Because they didn’t look like very fun reads to me. (I believe one of them was about some kind of epidemic that killed thosuands of people. Not exactly a light, fluffy beach read).

When I read, I want to be entertained — I want to have fun. And nothing does that for me better than genre fiction. Romances, mysteries, westerns, spy thrillers, fantasies. That’s pretty much what I read, and I’m not ashamed of it. I had enough of the “classics” in college to last a lifetime. Thinking about Ulysses by James Joyce still makes me shudder.

I guess I’m wondering where all the fun book clubs are — the ones that read genre fiction. And why so many folks feel like they have to read something that’s “important” or “worthy of their time.”

Maybe if we focused more on reading books that we actually like instead of those so-called important titles, we might actually read more. Just a thought.