Wot ho, fellows! Six more genres today means six more books! What am I talking about? It’s the 2013 Literary Exploration challenge!
Are you ready? Here we go!
7. Drama
Arthur Miller. Death of a Salesman.
“Drama” is a pretty big umbrella. Really, to be interesting, fiction generally needs to contain drama in some form. With that in mind, and running off the variably-useful Goodreads genre categorisations, I chose this. It’s been on my ‘should have read by now’ list for a while anyway.
8. Dystopian
Stephen King. The Running Man.
ADMISSION: I haven’t read anything by Stephen King except the Dark Tower series. Which seems odd, when I consider it, because the Dark Tower apparently references everything else he’s ever written. Anyway. I love dystopian fiction, but I was hard-pressed to find any that a) wasn’t classified primarily as YA, and b) I hadn’t already read. The Running Man seems like a good way to kill two birds with one stone.
9. Educational
Nicole Moore. The Censor’s Library.
Another huge umbrella. I took ‘educational’ to mean ‘non-fiction which teaches you something’, which narrowed it down a little. I’ve been interning at the University of Queensland Press lately – the publisher of The Censor’s Library – and one day I went through the as-yet unreleased eBook format, checking it had converted correctly from the hard copy. I had a very hard time stopping myself from just reading the book cover to cover. So here it is. (The eBook was perfectly converted, too)
10. Erotica
Krissy Kneen. Triptych.
(The actual cover includes a nipple and as such may N be SFW. Click that kitten’s button nose to see the real, brilliant cover)
I heard Krissy Kneen in a panel on pornography and censorship at the Brisbane Writers Festival last year, and I really liked her way of thinking. Inspired, I bought Triptych, and even briefly met Ms Kneen. As she signed my copy, she mentioned that I shouldn’t be discouraged by ‘the pony part’. I was a little bit discouraged, but in service to literary exploration, it’s time to read the whole thing instead of just looking for saucy parts. (It’s all saucy parts)
11. Espionage
John le Carré. Call for the Dead.
I’m looking forward to this. Late in 2011 I saw Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and was surprised to find myself absolutely loving it. I was delighted to find that not only was it based on a well-regarded book, but Tinker Tailor was actually main character George Smiley’s fifth outing. Call for the Dead is the first Smiley book and I can’t wait to read it.
12. Fantasy
Brandon Sanderson. The Way of Kings.
Fantasy is another huge category, so I took it as ‘epic/high fantasy’, though I’m not sure if that really means anything. According to my fantasy-expert contact, The Way of Kings is Brandon Sanderson’s answer to Robert Jordan’s zillion-page Wheel of Time saga, and since WoK is only one book, how could I argue?
Six more tomorrow, lovers! Or is this stretching out too much? Maybe twelve! Maybe… twenty-four. Thrilling stuff!
Got some ideas? Did I miss something obvious or obscure? Should I shut up? Drop me a comment!
the book of good 