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The Reasons for Reading Outside Your Genre

The Life of Pi and The Alchemist are great quick reads outside of fantasy, the former essentially a 300-page metaphor and the latter indecipherable. Definitely recommend them. Life of Pi is more high literary and Alchemist is more adventure
 
Hi,

If I have influences outside of sci fi and fantasy that influence me probably one of the most powerful would be Catch 22. I really like the way that it shows the unfairness of life in such a brilliantly clever and funny way. I also like the way it leaves you guessing for the longest time as to what'sactually going on. You think the story is travelling in one direction and then all of a sudden your perspective changes.

I'd add in some horror, mainly Koontz, for his characterizations of people. I like his positive outlook on people and their morality. Maybe it's Christian inspired as some say, and maybe he does somewhat overawe me with how enormously over achieving his "average Americans" are, but still there's something to be said for a writer who constantly gives you positive characters.

I mentioned detective before and I do like some Agatha Christie, for the complexity of her plots and her clue leaving. When I've written books with a detective angle to them I like to use her books as a template for sprinkling the clues through them in such a way as to look like nothing and yet suddenly show up as critical at the right moment.

Cheers, Greg.
 
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