I love bookish statistics, and what they reveal about people’s reading habits. I enjoy it when I come across them on other blogs (for example on Magic of Books), so even though I didn’t read a huge number of books in 2016 compared to other people I know, I thought it might still be fun to see what the stats on the humble selection I did read look like… and to satisfy my nerdy appreciation for graphs and charts. Continue reading
I’ve encountered quite a few fantasy and science fiction authors – famous and popular ones at that – who, when asked about their decision to write in the genre, say something along the lines of “oh, well, I just write what I write and someone slots it into a genre later, I don’t think about what genre I want to write in”. There’s often this additional implication that ‘genre’ is a dirty word – that is the oppressive tool of publishers and bookshops. Books get hemmed in and categorised by this evil notion of genre, and their authors get pigeon-holed as ‘fantasy writers’ or ‘crime writers’.
Frankly, I never understand this. I love the word genre. Continue reading
Thoughts on Fantasy 