Books & Genres: What We Choose to Read

Pauline Baird Jones, author, writer, romantic suspense author, science fiction romance author, steampunk, humor, action adventure

Truth by magnet.

If you hang around my blog, then you know that I love to talk about books. Books I’ve enjoyed. Why I wrote a book. Why an author wrote a book. Why an author writes. So okay, authors and books. But I love to talk about books and reading. Helping you (and me!) meet authors and find out more about the whys and hows of their books. So we can read more books.

Because I LOVE books. Love them. Love reading them.

So I got to thinking about another “why” of my reading.

Why I read/love the genres that I do.

Readers can and often are very passionate about their favorite genre. Like seriously passionate. Sometimes to the point of scary.

I love my favorite genres (though not to the scary-passionate point), but I’ve been known to go rogue and crossover to a new genre. In fact, I’ve been doing it all my life. However, I’ve always been true to romance.

Romantic suspense. Science fiction romance. Romantic mysteries. Cozy mysteries that sometimes have a little romance thrown in there.

Are you seeing a theme? That’s not to say I don’t occasionally stray. I’ve been known to read straight, unromantic mystery, and I had a long historical reading period. Those didn’t always have a happy ending, because, you know, history and the past. Not a good time for trying to survive life alive. I even had what I’d call my tragic romance period, though thankfully that didn’t last long. I’m not very good at angst. And I love me a happy ending.

I think the biggest leap for me, as both reader and author, was from romantic suspense to science fiction romance. Romantic suspense got a little gritty, a little too graphic for me, so I went looking for something exciting, but not bloody. And I realized that I’m more drawn to action-adventure type suspense and voila! I stumbled across science fiction romance. Action. Adventure in the stars. And yes, romance.

So what genres are on my Kindle right now?