Branching out into new genres | Reading updates

hey everyone! one of my goals for 2022 is to branch out and try different books with different genres, age ranges, formats and just expand my horizons and maybe find something new I enjoy? A big part of this is because I’ve read fantasy since I was a kid and continued that into adulthood without really looking beyond it (except for adding in romance) and while that’s completely okay I also don’t want to miss out on other genres I could possibly fall in love with or read things which may expand my knowledge.

I’m really happy to say I have been actively working on this goal of mine and reading beyond my comfort zone. I’m not pushing too hard especially because a lot of the time the reason I am reading is for comfort and it is not the time to try out something new when I just need a break from everything. However, anytime I’m bored and feel like I can tackle something different I’ve been giving new genres a chance and have read some non-fiction, thrillers and historical fiction!

Let’s just get right into the stats and the books I chose to try out these genres in this post!

STATS

A brief look into my stats easily tells us that Fantasy is and will probably always be the genre I read the most and while I have no qualms with that, I am glad to see myself branching out into other genres too. 25% off my reading is genres other than fantasy or romance and while it is lesser than what I want it to be (hopefully a third), it is still quite a significant amount and I am proud of myself for branching out and reading more genres and experimenting with them.

A majority of my experimentation this year has been with mystery and non fiction which I already knew from me trying them out a little last year and mostly enjoying it and wanting to continue that foray into these genres to scope them out more and see what about them I like or don’t like. I think I have figured out quite a bit of these genre for me and maybe as I read more and more of them I can actually add them substantially to my reading every year.

Other than that I had a few stints into contemporary, science fiction and historical fiction which are all genres I want to explore more of as well but also need to research a little more currently!

NON FICTION

One of my goals this year is to read at least 3 non fiction books and I am so glad I’ve been doing that and have actually already achieved this goal. So far we are 5 months into the year and I have read 4 non fiction books which translates to almost 1 every month and is already more than I thought I could manage! I’v been enjoying it quite a bit too exploring different kinds of non fiction from a memoir to an investigate journalism book to some feminist texts and they have all been so different and so compelling their own ways.

What I’m starting to see in this genre is how many different things come under it and how this could be an amalgamation of many other genres in fact with how diverse the stories are. I have to say that is can be a little tiresome to read non fiction as it required more brain power and attention and I do not always find myself with that after everything else I have to do in my day but when I do, it is definitely amazing to be able to invest my time into non fiction and learn something different.

I’m also finding I can read non fiction more easily with audiobooks since they are often composed of long chunks of text with a lot of information and I don’t do too well with trying to concentrate on such stuff but when I am being narrated this as I do some other mundane tasks I can go through them much more easily, pausing and going back to anything I want and thinking about it later to process everything I am reading but also not having to sit down and go through big blocks of text which end up boring me or stop me soon since there isn’t a thrilling tale to be lost in.

I’ll briefly touch upon the 4 non fiction books I’ve read this year below and what I thought of them and I highly recommend all fo them so if your looking for some non fiction to read, do check these out!

Crying in H Mart

This is a memoir of a biracial Korean American woman after she loses her mother who was her anchor to her Korean heritage. I loved this book because of how raw and emotional and vulnerable it was. The book is messy following the author’s thought process as she tries to deal with this grief moving between different memories of her mother explaining to us their relationship and how it shaped her to be who she is. Reading through their old memories that the author recalls with love and laughter and sometimes, pain and sadness to eventually seeing the author try to live on after her mother dies and find her new normal and cope with it was an intense and beautiful journey and I adored reading this book.

Empire of Pain

This is an expose on the Sackler family through 3 generations starting from laying the foundations of the family business to it being exploited and eventually coming into the public focus and being unravelled in recent years. The Sackler family was in the front and centre of the opiod crisis in America There was a lot to uncover and go through in this book and I liked how the author explained everything in quite some detail while also kept things simple enough for the reader to follow. A lot of it felt very unrealistic and at the same time so easily possible and my mind was blown to read in such meticulous detail about how things progressed to where they did.

White tears/ Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Colour

This book was so informational and enlightening and allowed me to learn so much and rethink a lot of my views. I really believe this should be required reading because it’s important and it’ll help children learn and be better and do better and help prevent a lot of the things that the books talk about which may be second nature to people by making them more aware of it. It also helped think more about what it really means to be a feminist and how it needs to be intersectional and how white women ned to learn and rethink their actions and how white fragility seems to reinforce white supremacy in small but important ways.

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot

Following the previous book I was interested in learning more about feminism and its issues and how they affect different women in society and picked up this book. I am so happy I did because it discusses some similar and some different issues all through a very different lens. I loved how this book was divided into various essays which were interconnected showing how all issues are related but also separate to see why these issues specifically need to be addressed and why they matter so much. This book made me rethink a lot about how different issues may specifically affect women like poverty and homelessness and gun violence which I hadn’t particularly considered feminist issues by seeing them examined through such a lens! I highly recommend this book too if you want to try to be a better feminist and learn more about the specific issues that aren’t always talked about.

MYSTERIES

This is another genre I vowed to try more of this year after liking A Good Girl’s guide To Murder last year! That series ended up being one of my favourites and so, here I am, trying to look into more mysteries like that one and see if this is a genre I might like to read on a more regular basis. So far things don’t seem to look that good since I advent enjoyed most of the mysteries I have read but there is still some hope that I have and maybe I can find the specific books recommended by friends to fix the situation?

I have managed to read 5 mysteries this year and to be completely honest, I only really enjoyed one fo them. I adequately liked another one but the other three were sorely disappointing. The problem in them for me was not the mystery itself though it the rest of the plot lines and the characters and so on so I still have hope for this genre and maybe if I can fix all the other things and find a book with nice characters and a romantic plot which doesn’t frustrate me then I can maybe enjoy mysteries?

I have unclear thoughts on this genre currently and I have to review it more to give complete concrete views on whether or not I will try to read more of it but currently I am siding towards no. Below, I briefly talk about the 5 mysteries I have read this year and why I havent enjoyed most of them:

All Your Twisted Secrets

This book started off well with a time bond mystery and possible murder and unknown person managing everything and would’ve been great off the author maybe focused on the present? The past flashbacks weren’t that interesting to me and all the characters seemed to be the same and to be horrible and not really ‘grey’ and I didn’t end up liking or caring for them. The tipping point though was the ending which was just… something. yeah, this book was not it for me.

Silence of Bones

This was a good and interesting historical mystery which definitely intrigues me but it felt like it dragged on a little too long from around the 50%-70% mark which made me lose a little interest. I really loved the intrigue and confusion though and maybe if things would’ve progressed just a bit faster, I would’ve loved it. I also how this book had no romance since it seems to be fitted into every book nowadays and can get a little tiring when it is really not needed. Overall, I enjoyed it quite a bit!

Arsenic and Adobo

This as such a fun and cosy mystery and I thoroughly enjoyed it. A perfect mystery, for me, involves high stakes, characters you can root for and clues which are incomplete enough to keep you guessing but also enough for you to make predictions. This book delivers on each of these fronts. I found myself very invested in the book, caring for the characters and unable to figure out what was happening next until just a few seconds ago if I even did.

Homicide and Halo-Halo

I was so so sad to not have loved or even really liked this book after how much I adored the first book in this series. The mystery in this book did not have me invested or at the edge of my seat waiting to see how it would turn out. Also, I wasn’t too invested in the romance and the love triangle got a little too stretched and boring in my opinion. A lot of the book also felt repetitive with regards to the firs book and so, yeah, it just didn’t work for me. 

How We Fall Apart

This book was definitely not for me even though I desperately hoped it would be. I hated all the characters, especially the main character, Nancy and Jamie, the murdered girl. Throughout the book I was wondering why any fo them remained friends with Jamie and why they didn’t leave her and while I did understand she was powerful and no one refused her, I didn’t get why not and the repercussions. The final reveal might have been meant to explain it but uh, I still didn’t completely get it to be honest. Thus, I wasn’t really invested in the book not caring about the characters and further, the secrets revealed also didn’t have enough of a repercussion in my opinion and I didn’t care about the book and so I didn’t really like it.

MISCELLANEOUS

Other than mysteries and non fiction, I read one book each of historical fiction, contemporary and science fiction. Contemporary is a genre that doesn’t really seem to make it’s way into my radar somehow and most books with contemporary settings I read have romance in them and so I mark them as such. Historical fiction is definitely not a genre I read ugh of since they seem to be predominantly white, racist and misogynist and I don’t really like those. So, I end up avoiding this genre except for specific books such as Pachinko. Science fiction is also not a genre I end up reading a lot of despite wanting it. It’s pretty close to fantasy and I want to read more of it and yet, somehow, I don’t end up doing it?

Here’s my thoughts on the books I read:

The Vanished Birds

This book was so so beautiful with its lyrical writing, focus on different types of loves and relationships and a sad, tragic but fitting end to everything. The Vanished Birds is a sci-fi book that spans over a 100 years but focuses on some small details which make the book incredibly personal and sweet and allows you get to know the characters very well. It allows you to feel for the characters and love them and get attached to them. All the characters were so real and felt tangible and like you knew them and I’m just in wonder about how the author managed to make me feel this way. 

Four Aunties And A Wedding

Oh this book was definitely a disappointment with the way that author continued to show the aunties as frivolous and made fun of their eccentricities and I ended up hating the main character for that and how she treated her fiancé – the man she was marrying in this book. The mystery too was a little annoying as I didnt really end up getting invested and was just reading for the sake of it.

Pachinko

Pachinko tells an ordinary story about ordinary Koreans who are just trying to live their lives in face of Japanese Imperialism. Its beauty lies not in the characters it tells us about or even the intricacies of the story it narrates but rather the broader themes that it encompasses which make you think and reexamine your views. This book has left me with so many feelings and thoughts and I know I will be coming back and reexamining this story multiple times before being able to see it in its entirety.

And that is my journey so far of reading books different from what I usually read! Do you try to branch out into different genres? What’s your experience with it? And do you have any mystery or non fiction recommendations for me, or any other genre you think I should check out?