Genres

I do read a lot. Most of the stuff I read is genre stuff, and there have been several genres I've liked. When I was in elementary school I liked mysteries, though I don't read them so much any more. What I liked then was The Three Investigators series of mysteries for kids.

Later on, I started getting into fantasy by reading The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings by the time I was in 6th grade. I must admit that that is still my favorite genre in general, though I haven't read it as much lately because all of these Buffy the Vampire Slayer wannabees who date vampires while battling the forces of evil seem to have taken over a large chunk of the genre. That's not to say I don't like some of that kind of stuff; I will be picking up Kim Harrison's next Hollows novel when it comes out next month.

Around the same time I got into fantasy, I started to read science fiction. I never really read it quite so much as fantasy, but I did read it. My tastes in that area tend to be a bit odd. I like a good space opera. I like cross genre stuff, like Asimov's  SF mysteries or Adams SF humor. I enjoyed Card's Ender books, though due to his politics I've been somewhat reluctant to pick up the most recent ones. I haven't been reading much lately, though there are a few SF books on my to read pile.

I am also rather fond of horror. I probably first got into horror with my love of horror films. It's still my favorite movie genre. I began reading horror in the late 80s when I started picking up works by Stephen King and Dean Koontz. Then in the 90s the horror genre pretty much imploded, and I stopped reading it. I picked horror up again a few years ago when I picked up Brian Keene's Dead Sea and since then it's rapidly become the genre I read the most.

Most recently, I've started reading bizarro. I've always been fond of weirdness and weird stories in general, so it's a genre that fits me pretty well. It's one that I expect to be reading a lot more of in the future.

Other than those, I've read some other genre stuff. I've read a few thrillers; I love F. Paul Wilson's Repairman Jack and recently started on James Rollins' Sigma Force series. The only westerns I've read have been cross genre stuff like Joe Lansdale's horror western Dead in the West. I once read a fantasy romance because I didn't realize it was a romance, and I hated it. I have read a fair amount of YA stuff, but that's mostly YA fantasy, and I tend to mentally classify it as fantasy.

I think I'll have to do more detailed posts on specific genres later, because this is a topic I actually could probably write a lot more about.