Quote:
Originally Posted by DNSB
One example of the issues I have with people who insist on putting books into genres is how do I classify books such as Dead Reckoning by Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill? A western with zombies? Three main characters drawing from 3 different backgrounds (the ancient girl dressed as boy hunting her brother trope, the steampunk genius inventor whose people skills are best expressed in negative numbers and the wise man raised by aboriginal Americans). A decent read, BTW, especially for the younger reader but neither authors' best work. Is it a western? Zombie apocalypse? Steampunk? Is zombie steampunk western a genre yet?
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I like to be able to sort and look at my TBR and already read lists by genre so that when I am wanting to read some fantasy or a thriller I could find them easily. Or when I want to nominate a book for a book club and it needs to be in a certain genre. But I also realize that only having a single label is NOT sufficient for most books.
So, I now just label them with anything that I think applies. The book above might be Western, Paranormal, Horror, Steampunk, and Alternative History in my library (I'm not completely consistent.) When I find that I label a lot of books with the same set of genres I might go and find a more "formal" genre that meets all of those criteria (like the "weird west" mentioned) but that doesn't happen often. The GoodReads "top shelves" area for a book is a decent starting place if I am trying to find out what genres a book is before reading it.