I read 60 books in 1990. I was taking classes and working so the number wasn't great.I have to say, I don't remember at least half of them. Movies seem to leave more of an impression with me. Or maybe I see the movies a second time.
The ones I put a star next t
o include: SOME CAN WHISTLE, (McMurtry), JULIAN'S HOUSE (Judith Hawkes), NICE WORK (David Lodge), ENEMIES, A LOVE STORY (Singer) still don't remember it much, CLEAR PICTURES, (Reynold Price), PICTURING WILL, (Ann Beattie), AFFLICTION, (Russell Banks), CONTINENTAL DRIFT, (Russell Banks), WILDLIFE, (Richard Ford), BECAUSE IT WAS BITTER AND BECAUSE IT WAS MY HEART (Oates), THE EXPENDABLES (Antonya Nelson), A HOME AT THE END OF THE WORLD, Michael Cunningham.There is a list of crime/genre fiction including books by Ruth Rendell (GOING WRONG), Aaron Elkins (ICY CLUTCHES), BURDEN OF PROOF (Scott Turow), NEMESIS (Oates), SLEEP AND HIS BROTHER (Peter Dickinson), DARK HALF (Stephen King), Elizabeth George (WELL-SCHOOLED IN MURDER.
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I see now why I haven't read the number of books some of you have. I WAS READING LITERARY FICTION. If I go ten years earlier, there are twice as many crime as lit-ten years later the same. What was I thinking in 1990? My kids were in college. Maybe I was trying to keep up with them.
Was there a time when you passed up genre fiction for literary stuff?
46 comments:
I read both literary and genre fiction. There was a time in the Sixties and Seventies when I read more literary fiction--John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, etc.--but I still read John D. MacDonald, Ross Thomas, and Ross Macdonald, too. Right now, the publishing industry is stressed out so who knows what we'll be reading next year.
I still read both but apparently in the early nineties, I read mostly this.
We'll be reading it electronically, no doubt.
As a student--when I was being indoctrinated into academia with all the bells and whistles that accompany literary theory--I would not have been caught dead with a genre fiction book in my hands; I had drunk the Kool-Aid and played the game. Now, I am wiser, and genre fiction is celebrated and embraced.
If I could remember 1990, I'd probably say I was reading hero pulp reprints, or maybe the complete works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Liteary Fiction would doubtless have served me better.
I've gone through periods where I've read more literary fiction but I've never gotten away from genre fiction. I can't forsee that I ever will, or that I'll do more literary stuff than genre.
Yes, that was the climate for many years. And certainly what Megan found at University of Michigan in 1990 as a freshman.
Some of you were reading Judy Blume in 1990.
I went years and years without reading really any fiction at all, just nonfiction almost exclusively. Still read quite a bit of that; last year was the first time in years that I actually read more fiction.
60 books in a year is a good year for me, Patti.
In 1990, I was reading literary stuff for high school--German, Dutch and English books mostly. No genre reading then, because I didn't have the time.
I sometimes pass up genre fiction now for a change of pace, but I'm always happy to return. I just really love crime fiction.
And a good year for me now, Chris. The INTERNET has wreaked havoc with my reading pace.
I can't imagine reading books in all those language, Fleur. What a great ability to have.
I've read literary fiction pretty consistently over the years, but never give up the genre stuff. I've been through the major genres and have kept up with crime novels and horror. SF was a big deal to me at one time, but I gave it up back in the late 70s/early 80s when everything started becoming (at least) trilogies. And I binge on writers when I discover someone I like. For instance, I discovered DeLillo when "White Noise" was published in the mid-80s, went back and read all his previous novels, and have kept up with him since. Right now my binge writer is Ed Gorman.
When my parents were redecorating their house, I finally had to take possession of the contents of what had been my bedroom. I hadn’t lived at home for decades, so popular books from the 1970s had remained on my bedroom shelves—a real time capsule. I was somewhat chastened by the amount of books I had clearly read (notes and comments in my handwriting throughout) but couldn’t remember at all—for example, books by John Irving, John Gardner, Jerzy Kosinski, and a number of political/cultural books (all with a seventies slant) such as Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, Halberstam’s (?) book about the Mei Lei massacre, and books about feminism and the women’s movement.
Although I’ve always enjoyed pulp/crime/mystery fiction (I know I’ve posted before about being assigned to read The Big Sleep when I was a college sophomore in 1976 and what an eye-opener that was), it was only in the mid-1990s that I began reading heavily in the genre. I don’t read crime/mysteries exclusively, but it makes up about 75% of my reading now.
My husband loves Delillo although not his recent book. You could do a lot worse than binging on Ed Gorman.
Deb-I couldn't remember the plots of hardly any of the books. Russell Banks stayed with me the most. His sad sack men are pretty indelible.
When I do break for literary fiction, it tends to have a genre bent. William Golding's Lord of the Flies is a good example. Sure, it's literary, but it also has atomic wars and survival narratives in it.
I think the key is, Loren. You like a true story--not just meandering.
I still don't accept the premises on which the question is based, but that doesn't surprise you, I'm sure.
I've always gravitated toward the the better-written, richer fiction of any sort. And most of the writers I've liked have tended to publish variously, much as most of the other artists whose work I've most enjoyed haven't allowed themselves to be limited by industry or audience perceptions of artificial distinction.
And contgratulations to you for the citation!
Well let's just say that convention defines certain subjects as genre. In some cases, it's a compliment. Good writing escapes confinement to any type. Poor writing leads to it.
And no writing, of any sort, escapes genre (even if sui generis!), nor is it by reasonable defintion unliterary. There's no way to set up a "literary" distinction that doesn't, distortingly, suggest that that class is the Good Stuff, and by exclusion, the other stuff Ain't.
Subjects don't make for "genre." Or else, Shakespeare is all "genre," for example...but, then, only marketing distinctions make for "genre." And people can choose to take those seriously, but in doing so they cripple their own art or they attempt to cripple others'.
There are schools of writing, as there are in all arts, and one can follow various models that can be called genres...even as such forms as the novel and the sestina are genres...but since the Bildungsroman is a single genre, while crime fiction is not, even the mystery is not, nor is horror nor science fiction nor romance, the use of those terms that way seems to me to require challenge or at least discussion.
Thanks although I think my blog is more "whatever is on my mind" than most of these more useful ones. It should be called Random Thoughts.
Well, you ask the big questions, Patti. Sometimes bigger than you suspected...
I didn't exactly mean subject-I meant--well, what did I mean? Not styles-anyway. Plots maybe. It is hard to write about a alien without it being considered science fiction. It's hard to write a book set in the 1800s west without it being considered a western. And so on.
Very similarly: calling (particularly) the European court and ceremonial ("classical") tradition "serious" music. You know, as opposed to that unserious jazz or gospel or folk music. Among so much else.
I read both and it seems to go in cycles which I prefer.
My parents all called it "good" music. It wasn't exactly a compliment either.
Well, yes, subject matter might define a field, but not a single model of approach, which is precisely what genre implies. For example, a classic drawing room mystery can be a deduction from clues, while a hardboiled detective story can be a mystery, but won't take the same approach or quite the same structure.
Larry McMurtry is a western writer, as is Cormac McCarthy.
Margaret Atwood is a sf writer (sometimes, as was Kurt Vonnegut sometimes, and also sometimes Stephn King or Richard Powers. And George Orwell But that doesn't meant they all neatly fit into a single "genre" of sf. Nor do R. A. Lafferty, Robert Heinlein, Philip K. Dick, Fritz Leiber or Ed Gorman when they might write sf.
My parents would have called you "a deep thinker." Also a quick thinker.
Whether it's meant to be compliment, its basis is to segregate it as a higher form. Which, perhaps even by your parents' intended use, is a distortion. At best. Snobbery against the "good" music or other art, at less than best, of th "highfalutin' nonsense" sort.
Let's say that Received Wisdom tends to inspire me. Thanks (I hope they would mean that as a compliment).
Not entirely-my husband was quite worrisome to them. But it's a great compliment coming from me.
I didn't then nor have I since seen a single one of those movies, Patti. In face I've never heard of most of them. Good grief.
I read 71 books in 1990. Though I have the count, I don't have the list, but I doubt much if any of it was "literary fiction", I was reading mostly mysteries at that time, though I did reread a lot of Steinbeck around that time, and some Sinclair Lewis.
Come to think of it, placing the time with where I was living, that I reread a lot of Lawrence Durrell in 1990, the Alexandria Quartet as well as Bitter Lemons, Tunc and Numquam. Seems to me that all took quite a while.
My top ten fiction list in 1990 was divided between general fiction and what would have been called mysteries then. The first six were Ghosts - Peter Barsocchini; King of the Road - Paul Hemphill; Blue Notes Under a Green Felt Hat - David Ritz; Second Season - Joseph Monninger; The Prince of Tides - Pat Conroy; and The Year I Owned the Yankees - Sparky Lyle and David Fisher. The last four were crime novels - To An Easy Grave - Alexander Law; The Lion at the Door - Newton Thornburg; Client Privilege - William Tapply; and Safe At Home - Alison Gordon. That year I also read Richard Ford's Wildlife. I think it was in the mid-Eighties that I started reading more genre fiction again and credit Robert Parker for leading me that direction.
Oh, Robert Parker definitely made me look at crime fiction seriously again. Prince of Tides was on my list that year, too.
Justine Quartet was a great favorite. I should reread it as my SIL likes it very much.
Good list. Yes, there are times (like the present) where mysteries just don't satisfy like they usually do. I'm still reading a short story a day (actually, more than one most days) but fewer mystery novels than usual.
Like George I try to mix things up, though he reads a lot more non fiction than I have been of late.
In 1990, I read 110 books, most of them mysteries. I read a lot of Simenon that year.
Jeff M.
He's remarkable, Jeff. He's said he wrote most of his books in three weeks. I spend more time than that on an email!
My "non genre" reading in 1990 included VIC HOLYFIELD AND THE CLASS OF 1957 by William Heyen (about a guy who buys his old high school and invites his senior class to live there for a year), LOVING WOMEN by Pete Hamill, LINCOLN by Gore Vidal, Pat COnroy's THE WATER IS WIDE (after reading THE PRINCE OF TIDES I read his earlier books), Larry Brown's FACING THE MUSIC (shorts), Anne Tyler's BREATHING LESSONS, Frederic Raphael's OXBRIDGE BLUES (shorts), Darryl Brock's IF I NEVER GET BACK (time travel/baseball tale), and THE THINGS THEY CARRIED by TIm O'Brien (shorts).
Jeff M.
LOVED The Things They Carried. I've been trying to persuade my book group to read it for seven years. That was about the last Anne Tyler book I truly loved. Also read the Conroy-a great one about his teaching and the Vidal.
in 1990 I was in high school, I did the second semester of 11th grade and the first semester of 12th grade that year. I don't recall what I read, it would be Jan of 1991 before I started to keep a record. If anything I was reading as much genre fiction as I could. I had discovered Ed McBain, Louis L'amour and Robert B. Parker from TV-- and a whole host of horror, men's adventure, sci fi and crime novels. I think I had read Miami Blues by Wileford at that point because I had seen the film. There were a lot of literary snobs in my high school, but I ignored their tastes as much as they ignored mine.
I had an frustratingly bad time when I broke down and took the second semester of American Lit in the spring of '91. The first semester (which I never took, but heard about) started off with the teacher saying 'Our hero for the semester is Hester Pryn---". Second Semester was almost all novels by minority authors, The Grapes of Wrath was the only book by a dead white male that we read, but looking back there was a lot of crime in the books. Native Son, The Bluest Eye (still my least favorite book I ever had to read for school), and Man Child in the Promised Land all have criminal elements in them. A lot of the class room discussions were about how class, racial and other societal structures caused the crimes. At the end of the class I gave the teacher a couple of Louis L'amour books and suggested she consider using one in class, I was soooooo young and hopeful in those days.
What we read in school is very much subject to what those teachers read in college. It swings back and forth. Also Hester Prynne never seems to go away. I went to a religious school where what the A stood for was never discussed.
A is for Aspire!
Actually, even more than what the teachers read in college (even teachers' college) is what the school board has approved and what has potted study guides avaiable for teachers' (and school boards') perusal and employment.
Rather as with book club guidelines.
I'm impressed by how many folks seem to keep track of all they read...not something I've ever been tempted to do.
Funny, I've read all the ones in the first paragraph and none of those in the second . . .
Good for you, Erik. I read these when they came out. You're discovering them later.
Oh yes. My university years, and my first few years of teaching. There was absolutely no time for anything else. (Well, my husband and children, of course, but they are not books).
So for several years I was starving, but I think I have made up for it since.
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