Have question need answer…

One of the blogs I follow is Literary Soundtrack. It’s written by two sisters who are voracious readers (as well as talented writers). If readers were dinosaurs I’d be a brontosaurus, the big herbivore that probably needed half a dozen stomachs to digest the odd mouthful of wood pulp. They’d be a pair of raptors. Even the T-Rex would know not to enter a reading competition with these two. He wouldn’t have a chance! They love finding music that musically fits favorite books as well as interviewing writers about how music inspires their writing. I love how they mention things that make me think about things I’ve never thought of before. Yesterday they posed a question that set my brain whirling. “Why do you read the genre that you do?” The surface answer would be; because I like it. But that’s not really an answer. Why are we drawn to specific genres? Why don’t I love reading Westerns? Why do I have no desire to read… This is where I fell off the cliff of sanity. How can I know why I read the genres I do unless I know all the genres I don’t? How many genres are there? How many of them have I not read? If I’ve never read a certain genre, how do I know I don’t want to read it? I ogled my computer like a starving piranha and forced myself to go to bed. This morning after seeing the Goblin off I was going to get some more sleep. It’s long gone midnight and my pillow is still waiting. I went onto Wikipedia and found under ‘list of literary genres’ what I was craving. Answers!

The list starts with Absurdist Fiction. Did you know there was such a genre? I didn’t. These are stories that, “focus on characters in a situation where they can find no inherent purpose in life, most often represented by meaningless actions and events.” It sounds pretty dismal. Who’d want to read drivel like that? There on the list was a book I’d read; Patrick Suskind’s Perfume. I didn’t see the movie, but I enjoyed the book, especially the parts that discussed the making of perfume.

The next on the list was Literary Nonsense. I’d never heard of that either, but I’ve read Douglas Adams and Dr Seuss. Then came Adventure Novel (self explanatory). Epic? The shortness of the title is an oxymoron. Epics are always looooooong. Lord of the Rings triology. War and Peace. I’ve never read either. Then comes Imaginary Voyage. This sounds fun, but then I live in my head. Gulliver’s Travel’s by Jonathan Swift was mentioned as an example. I’ve never read it though I’d like to think I have. Have you heard of Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World? Imagine, a woman writing about an imaginary voyage in 1616. How can you not want to look that up? The next genre is Lost World. Has anyone read A Merritt’s The Moon Pool or H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘At the Mountains of Madness’? I must read them or at least crack them open and see if they’re as magical as they sound. Men’s Adventure is a doozy…this cover is of one of the magazines featuring this genre… The cover of this man’s magazine illustrated one of the stories, ‘Man versus Weasel’. This genre (which appeared in a number of men’s magazines in the 50’s and 60’s) purported to be true, but I think we can assume that the man in the story who was attacked by a pond of blood thirsty weasels was fictional! Most of the stories are about men rescuing scantily clad women from danger which I think it’s rather romantic. I’ve no idea what my husband day dreams about…I’ll have to ask him. (He’ll probably tell me to mind my own fantasies which often do involve him. I like to imagine us meeting in different centuries. As my Anglo Saxon hero, he’s a Smithy and I’m a slave he’s rescued and I help make him rich with my artistic skills in gratitude for his many kindnesses…and I fall in love with him…and we have all sorts of adventures…I occasionally have to save him, but when some unfriendly tribe attack we tend to defend each other…can you tell I spend WAY too much time in my head?)

Milesian Tale is named after a lost book called Milesiaka, where the author Aristides wrote of himself retelling all the hot gossip from Miletus. The Decameron by Boccoccio is apparently a good example of this sort of work. If you knew any of this I’m truly impressed! A Picaresque novel is a realistic satire where the main character (of low social standing) survives by using his wits. This is originally a Spanish genre and to be truly Picaresque the story needs to have a moral happy ending. Have you ever heard of the Robinsade genre? Of course you have! This is the genre of stories spawned from the popularity of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. These are always ‘desert island stories’. I found this interesting as my heroine in Dancing the Maypole writes these about her and Peter and I didn’t even know it was a genre. Robinsade can also be called a subgenre of ‘Survival Fiction’. I prefer Robinsonade. The next one is Sea Story. That’s pretty self explanatory; the story always happens at sea. Children’s Stories…also obvious. The next one on the list was the last one I got to before becoming sidetracked completely…Young Adult Fiction…

Regency Note: Did you know that Young Adult fiction as a genre came about because a woman named Sarah Trimmer (who was a mother/ writer/educationalist) decided it was important enough to be taken seriously and defined the ages of 14 – 21 as Young adulthood? I’d never heard of her! In 1802 she founded a children’s literature periodical called, ‘The Guardian of Education’ where she discussed various books appropriate for the different reading ages. So she ( Wikipedia claims) created the genre of Young Adult fiction! She sounds like she was sort of an annoying person (she thought the poor should be educated so they could read the Bible and be productive moral poor people…because of course (herself being born upper middle class – her father being a tutor for George III) the social status quo was something to maintain. Regardless of what she thought the poor should do with their ability to read and write, she personally saw to it that many of them did learn these skills and encouraged other middle class women to start schools to help more poor children. She opened the doors for a lot of people to better themselves and that’s no small thing!

After reading about Sarah Trimmer, one of the books mentioned as an example of Young Adult section caught my eye; The Moonfleet by John Meade Falkner. Instead of working, sleeping or figuring out why I read the genres I do I read The Moonfleet. Written in 1898 it’s an adventure story set in the early 1700’s on the Southern English coast. If you love that old Regency theme of smugglers you’ll love this. It has a romantic element which is sweet. The main character for most of the story is about 15-16…hence YA! You can read it free on Project Gutenberg.

I’m no closer to figuring out why I read what I read…I shall have to keep thinking about it as I finish the list of genres…who knows what I’ll learn!