The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2024, pt. 12: Isabel Schechter

 

 

 

 

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2024

by Isabel Schechter

 

I am a creature of habit, and, once I discovered science fiction and fantasy books as a young person, it made up most of my reading. In the past few years, though, I have tried to expand the genres of books I read. The problem I ran into was not finding books to read, but rather figuring out the meaning of the various labels used to describe them.

Science fiction, fantasy, women’s fiction, historical fiction, literary fiction, chick lit, and romance are just some of the types of fiction I have read this past year. But what do all those labels really mean? Are you allowed to read women’s fiction or chick lit if you’re not a woman? Isn’t all fiction that is written in or about the past, historical? What makes literary fiction more literary than any other type of fiction? Does it count as romance if it’s not Harlequin, Hallmark, or features a bare-chested man on the cover? And what the heck is romantasy?

Thankfully, I belong to several book clubs that help me make sense of some of these labels. The newest (and most surprising to me and everyone who knows me) is a romance book club. It is this book club that has taught me the importance and utter foolishness of labels.

Sometimes labels are good, like when you’re looking for a superhero book to give a five-year-old for their birthday, you go to the section in the bookstore that is labeled for children instead of the section labeled gardening. But sometimes labels can get in the way of finding a good book, especially when a label keeps you from trying something new because that genre is frowned upon or dismissed as not serious or quality reading, as is the case with romance.

Books labeled as romance feature a romance between characters in the book, but other types of fiction also include a romance between characters, yet they are not labeled as romance. How much romance is required for a book to qualify as romance? How much romance is too much for a book to be labeled as anything else? Should I buy a book cover so that no one will see the bare-chested man on the cover and dismiss my reading as inferior?

What I have learned from expanding the types of books I read is that good books are good books, regardless of genre, just as bad books can also come in a variety of genres. So yes, I read romance novels, and I like them. I suggest you branch out and read other genres than your usual ones, possibly even romance novels. You might be pleasantly surprised at just how much you like books with bare-chested men on the cover.

 

 Isabel’s essays on race and representation in SF/F have been published in Invisible 2: Essays on Race and Representation in SF/F, Uncanny: A Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and several volumes of the WisCon Chronicles; and she is Co-Editor of The WisCon Chronicles Volume 12: Boundaries and Bridges. She is Puerto-Rican, feminist, child-free, Jewish, vegetarian, and a Midwesterner living in Southern California, and embraces the opportunity to represent the fact that no one of those identities excludes any of the others.