The Reasons for Reading Outside Your Genre

[Steerpike]

When it comes to classics, my favorites:

The Brothers Karmazov
Crime and Punishment (to a lesser extent than the other)
Lolita
The Haunting of Hill House
The Secret Agent, Chance, or Victory, by Joseph Conrad (anything by him is good)
Moby Dick
Dubliners (Joyce's short story collection)

All well worth reading

 

[Scribble]

Just goes to show how different tastes are. Granted, I read this as a junior in high school, but I loathed this book. As in, worst possible book ever. It just went on and on and on.

Not sure if my reaction would be different today or not. I have such bad memories of it that I have no desire to find out.

When I read it in school, I don't recall being quite so taken with it. Now that I have children, I felt the creeping fear of the starvation of the Joad children, the desperation of losing all that you've had, the pain of having once been respected then reviled, the loss of humanity of my daughters, wife. It's the story of the shattering of men by circumstance in ways I was utterly oblivious to in my youth. The idea of being on the road, free and without land was no big deal at 15, heck, I'd welcome it then.

This is the line that expresses the fear of a father in the clearest terms, and the dangerous creature he can become when his children go hungry.

“How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him--he has known a fear beyond every other.”

That quote scares me, for as much as I stand up as a moral man (as moral as I can manage) if my children go hungry, there's nothing I won't do to feed them, steal, even kill. Being faced with the reality of life's need, we see how fragile our current comfort is, how quickly it can be taken from us, leaving us to become fearful monsters fighting for food. No pretty words or high thoughts will keep us from feeding our children when we finally break from civilized life.

So, it has that emotional punch. Plus the theme is still just as pertinent. We've swapped men with dirt on their jeans, growing natural food for the Big Machine. There's nobody to blame for bad fortune, nobody to take revenge on, only banks and corporations.

What I like are the ways he personifies nature, the land, the sky in a way that extends my feeling as a reader as being part of the land witnessing the story of people happening upon it. Not sure if that makes sense, kind of hard to describe.

“You're buying years of work, toil in the sun; you're buying a sorrow that can't talk.”

“The clouds appeared and went away, and in a while they did not try anymore.”


“And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.”

And a few other lines I like:

“And her joy was nearly like sorrow.”

“Yes, you should talk," he said. "Sometimes a sad man can talk the sadness right out through his mouth. Sometimes a killin' man can talk the murder right out of his mouth.”

 

[Scribble]

When it comes to classics, my favorites:

The Brothers Karmazov
Crime and Punishment (to a lesser extent than the other)
Lolita
The Haunting of Hill House
The Secret Agent, Chance, or Victory, by Joseph Conrad (anything by him is good)
Moby Dick
Dubliners (Joyce's short story collection)

All well worth reading

Those are some hefty books!

I quite like Hermann Hesse, I would mention Demian, Steppenwolf, Siddhartha as my favorites. I've read Siddhartha I don't know how many times, it is like an anthem of my life.

Speaking of... Anthem by Ayn Rand. I'm not a fan of her philosophy, nor do I like anything else she has written, but this one holds a fascination for me.

I've read Iron in the Soul by Jean Paul Sartre and The Stranger by Camus a few times.

Johnathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach was a book I was given as a child, it's an important book for me.

I read mostly philosophy as a teen, starting with Nietzsche, I think I was trying to impress smart girls or something. Or any girls. It didn't seem to work.

 

[Steerpike]

Those are some hefty books!

I quite like Hermann Hesse, I would mention Demian, Steppenwolf, Siddhartha as my favorites. I've read Siddhartha I don't know how many times, it is like an anthem of my life.

Speaking of... Anthem by Ayn Rand. I'm not a fan of her philosophy, nor do I like anything else she has written, but this one holds a fascination for me.

I've read Iron in the Soul by Jean Paul Sartre and The Stranger by Camus a few times.

Johnathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach was a book I was given as a child, it's an important book for me.

I read mostly philosophy as a teen, starting with Nietzsche, I think I was trying to impress smart girls or something. Or any girls. It didn't seem to work.

I have Siddhartha in my to-read pile. Haven't read it. I did like The Stranger. As for Rand, I actually enjoyed Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead, for the most part (philosophy aside).

I also have The Magic Mountain, by Mann, which looks to be quite good. I haven't read anything by Sartre. Not sure why; I'll have to fix that.

 

[Scribble]

Put Siddhartha in your mp3 player! Free audiobook from Thought Audio. They have a number of public domain books in audio format.

ThoughtAudio.com - Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, unabridged free audio book download

Oh yeah, Call of the Wild by Jack London. That book I read to shreds as a kid.

 

[Steerpike]

Put Siddhartha in your mp3 player! Free audiobook from Thought Audio. They have a number of public domain books in audio format.

ThoughtAudio.com - Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, unabridged free audio book download

Awesome. Going to do that tonight.

 

[Svrtnsse]

Johnathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach was a book I was given as a child, it's an important book for me.

I've got the comic version framed on my wall:
http://get.unshelved.com/strips/20090705.gif

 

[Scribble]

I've got the comic version framed on my wall:
http://get.unshelved.com/strips/20090705.gif

LOL! Oh man, that's a keeper

Here's a movie clip, Be by Neil Diamond

 

[Ophiucha]

I read a lot of romance and chick lit, since I like reading about more feminine female protagonists and there aren't many of those in fantasy (or really, any genre other than the ones written for women). I read a lot of science fiction, particularly hard SF. It's kind of weird, since I adore fantasy, but I actually hate space operas and only like soft SF if it's got some really good philosophy or writing to support it. I don't read many mysteries or crime novels, but I do like The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency and Sherlock Holmes. Horror, I only really read if it crosses over a bit with SFF/supernatural. Historical fiction is okay, thrillers bore me to tears, and I have an odd fondness for Westerns despite it being the embodiment of about a thousand tropes I hate. And I like literary fiction, though I have hard limits in terms of pretentiousness I can tolerate.

Favourite 'Classics':
- Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
- Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott Abbott
- Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf
- Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabakov
- everything by Jorge Luis Borges
- Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

 

[Steerpike]

- Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabakov

Ah. Wonderful book

 

[crash]

I tend to read a lot of spy, historical and classic novels aside from Fantasy. I read a lot of Alan Furst, who combines history and espionage beautifully with the feel of a film noir. When it comes to historical novels I tend to read works set in the first half of the last century. I do read Philippa Gregory novels, but more as a guilty pleasure; her prose is excellent, but her use of artistic license is really annoying. As for classic literature, I like Jane Austen, Robert Louis Stevenson, George Orwell, Nancy Mitford (is she considered a classic novelist now?), Margaret Lawrence and Jack London. And I guess I could add Hunter S. Thompson, I totally love Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Some non-fiction I do like are Generation Kill and The Bloody White Baron; if any of you haven't read those you should check them out.

 

[GeekDavid]

One of the best books I've ever read outside the fantasy/sci-fi genres is Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.

It tells the story of a single remarkable man in the Nazi era of Germany, the decisions he had to make, and how they turned out.

 

[Feo Takahari]

I think there are very few books you can't get anything out of. Take Dan Brown--the man's terrible at characterization, but he's a genius at modulating tension through carefully arranged structures, rationing out fear and confusion sentence by sentence and even word by word. I don't like or use his style, but I think some other authors would be able to make better use of it than Brown does by pairing it with other talents. And you could argue similarly for Meg Cabot's insight into social interactions*, or Christopher Paolini's knack for writing a powerful character who still feels human and fallible, or maybe even Stephenie Meyer's grasp of the nature of obsessive love.

*With apologies to Cabot for lumping her in with Meyer--she's a much, much better writer, and I think she's been unfairly dismissed because of her genre.

As for a specific thing I'm learning from, I'm reading a nonfiction book called Explaining Hitler. The author references a theory by Isaiah Berlin that historically significant leaders who come from the margins of society tend to be very charismatic, but also obsessive and unstable. That's definitely going to influence one of my characters.

 

[Penpilot]

Photocopies by John Berger - It's a book of short vinaigrettes. Reading it I leaned how a composition of simple description and language can create mood and emotion just as well or even better than complex description and language. It made me realize when used well, five cent words, can add up to a lot more than a collection of fifty cent words.

Disgrace by JM Coetzee - It's a book dealing with post-apartheid South Africa. It's one of those stories that brilliantly illustrated the complexities of the situation by putting into a simpler context. When I first read it, I only saw the surface level of the story and didn't really understand the ending. But then one day, the story popped back into my head and I realized I'd learned something without realizing it. I realized how brilliant the ending was.

The Things They Carried by Tim O'brien - Another example of simple writing and how it's used to create emotion. O'brien was a vet of the Vietnam war and this is one of the stories that he's written about it. For those of us who wonder what war is really like, he's lived it, and he's put it to word.

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter - A retelling of a bunch of fairy tales, I found that it's a great example of taking the old and making it new again, with your own spin.

 

[Steerpike]

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter - A retelling of a bunch of fairy tales, I found that it's a great example of taking the old and making it new again, with your own spin.

Absolutely brilliant collection.

 

[Asterisk]

I'll pop in and say that I only read the first page of this thread, so forgive me if you're already waaaay off this. But. Anywho.

I'm a writer of fantasy, but I've only read three fantasy series in my lifetime so far. Lord of the Rings, Narnia, and the Percy Jackson series, if that counts as fantasy. I've tasted some sci-fi, but mainly read fiction that's set in the real world. What I love about fantasy is that there are no rules... you create, you destroy... you make a world. You're probably going "DUH", but whenever I think about this, I'm just amazed at how awesome it is to be a writer and experience this.

Alright, I've done my rambling...carry on

 

[Philip Overby]

Well, this kind of turned into a recommendation thread, but I guess that's fine.

What I was hoping to hear more of is how these books have improved you as a writer and given you a new perspective that you might not be getting from fantasy books.

 

[Ophiucha]

What I was hoping to hear more of is how these books have improved you as a writer and given you a new perspective that you might not be getting from fantasy books.

Science fiction, I feel, is close enough to fantasy that many of its tropes translate easily. In particular, I think science fiction authors more readily explore social and political themes. There are entire subgenres dedicated to most philosophies, from feminism to libertarianism, and the way science fiction addresses them - in settings so futuristic or foreign that our prejudices are no longer applicable - is completely translatable to otherworld fantasy. I definitely take this when I'm writing more political fantasy and use it to my advantage.

Romance and chick lit, as I mentioned earlier, has the widest variety of female characters in fiction. Older women, mothers, women of colour, married women, fat women, the sorts of women who are rarer in other genres. Though these two genres are not without their own clichés and problems, it is wonderful to read different interpretations of a character type you're not likely to see elsewhere and let that influence how you write them in fantasy novels. I found it really helped me break away from having all of my female characters be skinny, white 20 somethings, and it helped me consider agency within romance subplots rather than dismissing them entirely for fear of reducing a woman to a love interest role.

Historical fiction can show the value in research, certainly, and I think in worldbuilding. No, historical fiction writers don't worldbuild in the same way, but without the flashes of magic and, generally, the same epic/action storylines, I find the setting shines through quite a bit and the richness of detail that comes from period accuracy and loving descriptions of minor things really shows how well a bit of detail can enhance a world, whether it is the one we live in or one we created.

Literary fiction is the genre of experimentation. Here there be footnotes, unreliable narrators, and non-standard narrative structures. Not all of these translate well into genre fiction, not if you expect to be published anyway, but some of them work beautifully. Consider Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which has fictitious footnotes likely influenced by literary fiction. It really enhances the worldbuilding, and adds a lot of subtlety to the story if you take the time to read them. Epistolary novels, with 'excerpts' from newspapers and diaries, work beautifully in a fictional setting when you can create famous literary works for your characters to enjoy and quote. Lots of potential to snag some ideas from this genre.

 

[Penpilot]

What I was hoping to hear more of is how these books have improved you as a writer and given you a new perspective that you might not be getting from fantasy books.

Well reading outside of fantasy made me better because I realized that generally speaking different genres do certain things better on a consistent basis. Picking a genre book and studying it for its general strengths made it easier to focus on certain things because they're so prominent. For contemporary, I learned small problems can lead to big stories. Basically not every story has to be saving the world. Internal issues can carry a story if the character is interesting enough. For scifi, I saw how ideas and concepts are extrapolating on, taking the idea of "What if X" from present to the future or taking an idea to the extremes and exploring it. For thrillers, I saw how fast pacing works and how to make something a page turner. For fantasy, I saw how in depth world building can be and what was needed to make a world full.

You can learn all these things in one genre, because they apply to all of them. For example, contemporary fiction needs world building too, but just not as much as fantasy. I find that looking at one genre for it's particular strength--which is my opinion of the strength. Others opinions may also apply--beneficial because it removes distractions. Looking into contemporary fiction, you can focus in on story and character without the distraction of the awesome world building right in your face. The opposite may be true for fantasy. You can study the world building easier because it's so prominent.

 

[Svrtnsse]

I mentioned Tove Jansson earlier. I believe what I've mostly taken away from her writing is the power of association. It's about how short simple easy words can be used for great effect by letting them play with the expectations of the reader. Take the quote below. Look at the red boots.

“Lie on the bridge and watch the water flowing past. Or run, or wade through the swamp in your red boots. Or roll yourself up and listen to the rain falling on the roof. It's very easy to enjoy yourself.”
― Tove Jansson, Moominvalley in November

The red boots makes you think of being a child and being happy about the new shiny boots and splashing through the puddles. They're small words but they bring so much with them.
Same with "roll yourself up". It doesn't really make any sense - except it does. It conjures images of cuddling under a blanket listening to the rain which in turn brings all kinds of other associations with it.

I want to do these things too.