‘Not my genre’ I said whenever the discussion turned towards fantasy. That’s what I have believed about my reading taste all along.
I prefer reading about real people in real situations rather than about made-up creatures in artificial circumstances. For escape, I preferred romance (not adulterated with paranormal or sci-fi).
At least that’s what I thought.
Every once in a while, even the most rebellious feel the pressure to fit in. After almost twenty years of avoiding Harry Potter, I caved in last year. As far as reading fantasy was concerned, I had minimized the risk with this choice. I had read The Causal Vacancy as well as the Cormoran Strike novels by Rowling, and found her writing to be charming. So at the very least I wasn’t going to dislike the books because of the author. Besides whether or not I enjoyed the story, there was one upside to spending time reading it. I would no longer feeling alienated among friends who had at watched the Harry Potter movies, if not read the books.
Here is how it went:
Huff! What a journey. I must watch the movies too! Oh did they make eight of those? And yes – register on Pottermore.
Though I admit I couldn’t figure my way around at Pottermore, I was happy that I had read the books. Encouraged by this experiment of reading in not-my-genre I picked up Twilight a few days later and concluded that I only had beginner’s luck with Harry Potter.
Meanwhile, my husband had been pestering me for years that Game of Thrones is a drama first, a fantasy only later. So, about a year after Harry Potter I decided to give it a shot. The show first, because I needed something on TV to keep me from remembering that I am engaged in the mind-numbing task of walking on treadmill.
Here is how it went:
Thank God, the next book isn’t out yet. I need to go on a detox regime. Even though I know that I will jump on it as soon as the next book is out.
I haven’t quite become a fantasy reader yet. The books will have to be very popular for me to read in the genre. But I definitely have to eat my words ‘not my genre’. Need to be more conservative about using that phrase now.