As a long time and avid reader one of the things I’ve thought about particularly over the past couple weeks in particular is the idea of genre. To be totally honest it wasn’t something I had thought about a whole lot. I just knew what I liked and stuck with that for so many years that picking books within a certain category sort of became routine if you will. After a while this routine became something more than that I think. It became a habit of sorts to select only books within a couple of genres. The more I thought about this idea I couldn’t help wondering if this was simply because there is/was a certain comfort level that I had trapped myself into. For better or worse I can’t seem to help being more drawn to fantasy and sci-fi titles. This whole thing got me thinking maybe it was time to delve into this question a little deeper.

A couple of days ago as I was adding my latest book update it was hard not to continue thinking about this as I looked at the books read last year. It was a little astounding to realize that I had in fact read more books in a single genre. Close to 90% of them were sci-fi when it came right down to it. Sure, some were a little off the beaten path but that didn’t change the fact that my reading list had gotten a bit monotone. This Years list was starting look exactly the same as the last one. I wasn’t sure what to make of this. This once again brought up the posed question; what is your genre? More than that is it bad to read in such a narrowed path? On the surface level one might say my genre is sci-fi based on what I have read over the past couple of years.

So here is my question to you: is it a bad thing to constantly read books within a certain genre? I understand we as readers will gravitate towards what we enjoy most. I personally decided take a moment to reevaluate my reading selection for this year to try to broaden my lists a little. Maybe even explore some books in other genres I have perhaps avoided in the past. I would like to challenge you to think about what you read, what you like, and see if you might have started to box yourself in like I had. I feel reading should be an experience rather than become so routine we lose sight of other possibilities that are out there as well. Where do you stand on this question and do you see as a remedy for a monotone reading experience?