Genre | 1 | What is it?
- Tango with Text
- Mar 21, 2017
- 2 min read
Approximate reading time: 2 minutes
I was recently asked what my favourite genre is at a book launch. How did I answer? "Oh, I read anything but I'm not really fond of non-fiction or historical novels". Of course, this is not true because what I love is a book that makes me feel good or a story that makes me think. I read non-fiction when I need to learn something and I mostly don't enjoy novels with an historical theme. So, what then are my favourite genre's? In fact, what is a genre? Surely as a book blogger I should know this? Time to do some research!
Merriam-Webster says:
'Definition of genre -1: a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content - a classic of the gothic novel genre
2: kind, sort
3: painting that depicts scenes or events from everyday life usually realistically'
From this we see that a genre is a group of things (in our case, books) defined by a commonality in style, form or content, enabling us to know the broad category it falls into such as Non-Fiction, Fiction, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy and so on. However, there are also sub-sets in genres and this is where the fun begins! And where the confusion may set in....
With the onset of the term 'popular fiction', around which there has been great debate, the number of what we refer to as genre's in fiction has exploded. There are literally hundreds of terms we use to label the genre's we enjoy. In this series of posts, genre lables will be discussed to help you decide on how to classify your favourite read.
References:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/genre
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