For the Love of Books – What’s Your Favourite Genre?

Reading is a true pleasure, and not only do we all have books we love,
stories we adore, but we often have genres that we lean towards
when we’re searching for new books.

So, where’s your heart when it comes to the books you read?

These days books are very much pigeon-holed into genres, which when I first began writing didn’t occur to me at all! I just wrote the story inside my head before discovering it really didn’t fit a particular genre. In the end, my first series of books, The Hope Within Novels, (Now renamed The Surviving Hope Novels) actually fit very well into the Young Adult field, and we all know YA can be read and loved by any age at all!

Since my first book, I did learn that to succeed it’s pretty important to know your genre, and through flash fiction and short stories, I discovered my passion is fantasy – moving into steampunk and post-apocalyptic.

I grew up with Enid Blyton’s The Famous Five adventures – exploring ruins, islands, castles, and moved into Narnia, The Hobbit, and my favourite The Dark is Rising Sequence. I was hooked. From there Philip Pullman, Tolkien, Eoin Colfer, and again, my favourite author, Garth Nix and his Old Kingdom series captivated me. I read many genres, but love writing contemporary and fantasy.

So, what do you love?

My love of fantasy arrived with dragons and after Smaug, I fell for some friendlier types in the rather wordy Eragon series by Christopher Paolini. Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea is a classic, as is anything by Tolkien, and I’ve loved current books Orison by Daniel Swensen and the beautiful Quest of the Dreamwalker from Stacy Bennett. I am also entranced by Patrick Rothfuss, and fell in love with The Slow Regard of Silent Things.

© Lisa Shambrook

Are you a romance reader? I went through some steamy romances in my twenties, my bored housewife/young mum years, but my palate grew up and I now love fantasy and contemporary romances. I have been completely enchanted by Sophie Moss and her Seal Island Trilogy, and can’t wait for her latest book in the Wind Chime series… And you’ll love ditsy Katie Button from Lizzie Koch.

© Lisa Shambrook

Or does horror chill you? I was never a horror fan, preferring movie versions of most horror stories if any, but I did love James Herbert’s Portent, and I’ve read a few Stephen King. J. Whitworth Hazzard blew the zombie genre right out of the water with Dead Sea Games, and I adored the chilling literary tales from Max Power and Darkly Wood.

© Lisa Shambrook

Do you love the classics? Are you a Bronte fan, or do you go weak at the knees for Mr Darcy? I’ve always loved fairy-tales, stories that chill, enthral, and fascinate bringing us dragons, fae, and much more. I love Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, then there’s The Count of Monte Cristo from Dumas, and so much more. The classics are right there, standing the test of time.

© Lisa Shambrook

Are your tastes more eclectic? I remember raiding Dad’s bookshelves to read John Wyndham, introduced to Chocky by the BBC TV series on Children’s Television back in 1984 – and I then devoured The Midwich Cuckoos, The Chrysalids, The Kraken Wakes and more. Sci-fi is still up there with my favourites, but I tend to watch sci-fi much more than read it.

Autobiographies, Mum and Gran loved reading about people, real people, and my husband enjoys it too, not so much my cup of tea.

Contemporary, is a hit and miss thing for me these days. There are some brilliant books out there like Rachel Joyce’s The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep from Joanna Cannon, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs, but you can easily hit some real misses.

I also enjoy Thrillers, Harlan Coben being my favourite.

© Lisa Shambrook

Children’s books, I still read kids’ books, why not? They are what introduced me to reading and inspired me to write myself. The Silver Brumby absolutely entrances me, and I will always love it. I’ve even been known to reread Blyton’s The Castle of Adventure as an adult…

From children’s books to Young Adult…a genre that is a law unto itself. Harry Potter broke the mould with children’s books, bringing them to children and adults simultaneously. Now, you’ll see YA in the hands of all ages. John Green and Meg Rosoff inspire when they pen great stories, and so do some much lesser known authors, like Angela Lynn who had me completely in love with All the What Ifs, and Louise Gornall with an emotional journey through Under Rose Tainted Skies. Another book that made me weep was Loser from Jerry Spinelli, a book I would read again and again, and Anne Holm’s I am David. My books, Beneath the Rainbow, Old Oak, and Distant Star, also inspire through difficult journeys and true to the YA genre have been loved by all ages!

© Lisa Shambrook

Lastly, I love short story books. I love a book I can pick up while I’m waiting, and I’m often waiting for children, dentists, Drs, and other appointments. Short tales are inspiring, eclectic, a good use of spare time, and they also introduce us to new authors, or an author’s writing style, when you fall in love with their writing, you can search out full-length novels and bury yourself among your favourite words! And, like with Human 76, you can sometimes find a completely original and exciting concept, this time a book of tales by different writers, brought together in the same world, but each telling a unique story.

© Lisa Shambrook

So, tell me, what books do you love, where is your passion,
and what genre is your ‘go to’ when searching for a new read?   

Why Do You Read – The Results

Last week, I asked Why Do You Read, and this week we learn why… To sum up the results, I’d like to quote Blue Harvest Creative who pretty much hit the nail on the proverbial head
‘I read to learn, to experience, to feel, to escape, to immerse myself
…it’s something I have to do.’

This is why we read.

Pinterest – Blue Harvest Creative – William Styrone

Thank you so much for all those who voted in the poll, I appreciated your time and responses. As an author it’s valuable to understand the reasons why people read. As writers we read much of the time we’re not writing, but sometimes we become so absorbed in our own little worlds, it’s good to remind ourselves of the motives readers have for indulging!

Before giving you the results, I’d like to comment on the ‘Other’ reasons almost 5% of you gave in the poll and you came up with some great reasons:

To maintain my sanity

Reading helps me hone my writing skills

Improve both my writing and reading skills

Research, to be a better writer!

It’s a de-stresser

Ideas! To discover new ideas and new perspectives!

I want to know everything…and…read every single book ever written!

I can attest to all of these, especially how reading improves both my writing and my sanity! As an author, I need to know my market, my subject, and what’s already out there – reading and research aids this. And to the final answer I replied: so many books so little time – the reader and writer lament!

So, to the results – Why Do You Read:

21% read to escape to another world

18% tell me it’s in their DNA, they have to

14% want to experience life they never can without reading books

10% desire to learn something new

9% read to elicit a strong emotion such as fear, joy, grief, or another emotion they might not otherwise experience

8% read to understand the world around them better, to learn about their surroundings

6% read to fill spare time

6% want to experience a different culture or life

5% give us the other reasons listed above

And our final 3% read for school and other education

In conclusion – the most popular answer is to escape…over a fifth of us choose to leave the world behind to escape into another world, to have an adventure, as our main reason for reading. I know many people chose multiple answers, and our reasons are varied and sometimes complicated, but the one most of us choose is to escape.

© Lisa Shambrook

Reading offers a chance for our brains and our minds to breakout of the lives we lead, to indulge in fantasy, dreams, diversity and essentially time to let our minds catch up with our souls.

Thank you for sharing your reasons with me…

© Lisa Shambrook

I read for escape, for emotion, for encounters that I cannot experience myself and I read to diversify my life. I want those highs and lows, I want to feel crushing pain and soaring joy – I want to know I’m alive!

I’ve included pictures of some of my favourite books – they have broadened my horizons, encouraged me, informed me, and helped me escape.

© Lisa Shambrook

I’ve wandered through the Misty Mountains with Bilbo, I’ve raced across the ice fields with Lyra on the back of a polar bear, I’ve searched the library and the Old Kingdom with Lirael, I’ve sailed upon a surrealist ocean with Pi and his tiger, and I’ve been there when the dark rose. I’ve learned about the holocaust and survival, and wept, with both David and the boy in the striped pyjamas, I became what I was, I learned about the power of memories and colour from Lois Lowry, and Loser didn’t lose. I was delighted by the little Prince, and intrigued by the alphabet. I cried with Beth and loved with Jo. I was anorexic, I loved like no other, I had adventures with the Famous Five and I fell in love with silver brumbies. Books bring me home, they take me away, they let me live and love and when stars fall I know they can still shine!

This is why I read.    

Tell me where books have taken you?