Genres I never knew existed prior to book blogging!
Good morning!
If you’d read my Micro Brew- 1st prompt for April, you’d know that I had been wanting to start a discussion with you guys towards book genres – and the day finally came !!
I’ve been a reader since as long as I can remember, but my love for books came from family and wasn’t like – fully branched out like it is today if it make sense? I feel like anything outside what my godmother/school would pick was unknown to me back then, I basically only knew the basics: Thrillers/Crime, Romance, fiction/non-fiction, biography, Sci-fi, etc..
So of course when I entered the vast world of book blogging, I saw so many different genre of books that got me very confused upon what in hell that was about xD To be honest, I had and still HAVE quite the trouble to identify what count as what sometimes..
♦ YA / NA / A; this is the one i’m having the hardest with .. Middle grade is more easy to know what is in that category, as it’s mostly “children books” like when I was younger. For the rest.. I am completely lost and mostly rely onto what Goodreads, authors or even other bloggers tells me. Seems like it is with how old the MC is, while sometimes it’s kinda not.. I don’t even know, honestly 😂
♦ Graphic Novels; I know what manga and comics are.. but graphic novels ? eeeh – not really. From research I learned it’s a type of comic that isn’t in a serie – like tintin, superheroes and etc. who has MULTIPLES of them counts as comics, and anything else that is like, stand-alones of the comics is a graphic novel instead. Im sorry.. but for me a comic is a comic – to me graphic novel sounds like you’d have a book full of paragraphs (like a “normal” book) and then have a few images here and there (is there a word or genre for thoses..?)
♦ Contemporaries; I mostly read this one without even realizing, as i’m not one to read historical or pre-war stuff.. I so much more like to read book in the present days. I just didn’t knew there was actually a name for thoses, as nobody had told me.
♦ Different fantasy genres; Post-apocalyptic, Dystopian (still no idea what this one means), Steampunk, Magic Realism .. as with the comics above, to me I just would’ve put them all in one big “fantasy” bracket 🤷🏽♀️
♦ Mental health
♦ LGBTQ+
♦ Self-help
♦ #OwnVoices
This is all the ones I can think of right now ! i’m sure there must be many others, as i’ve been mostly growing up thinking of the “bigger brackets” rather than all the little ones and sub-genres you may have for one book.
Is there any genre you didn’t knew about before joining the book blogging world?
what are they? Do we have some same ones?
33 thoughts on “Genres I never knew existed prior to book blogging!”
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Fun post! The YA/NA/Adult thing confused me to because I have read books about tennagers characters that were considered adult books.
Iknow! The rule don’t always work.. which confuse me even more 😂 some « older » ya is considered ya anyway because no sex and all but like ???
Interesting post. There are certainly several genres that I have become more aware of since I began blogging, especially New Adult and contemporary.
Great post! I came across some really good genres like dystopian fiction when I started book blogging! At one point, I had no idea that YA meant young adult!
I’d fear that dystopian would be too complicated for me right now .. but im happy you discovered something new you like !
Yeah dystopian can be a bit tricky to read. It took me a few weeks to adapt to it but I love it now!
Thank you!
Dystopian is referring to a kind of messed up version of how life could be I think? Like books like hunger games is set in a dystopian future so I think that’s what it means? Idk! Ahaha but same I had no idea that NA was a thing until a couple weeks ago!
Yeah.. I think so, and Utopian is the opposite; a “perfect world”.
Atleast we aren’t the only one on that side ! ahah 😅
As a huge reverse harem fan I get this all the time, that people didn’t know of the genre until seeing my blog. It was always weird to me, that so few had heard of it (even though I’ve only known about it for like 1.5 years). But looking at your list, I can see there’s more for me to learn 😛 Graphic Novels is new to me, I might have to check it out at some point 😀
Oh! Right i learned that one too- mainly by the person that was looking to work with bloggers to help authors. She had sent me an email regarding that genre.
Tbh I do need to read more of graphic novels too :p
Cool! Which authors, if you don’t mind me asking, I need more new RH books 😉
Eeeeh to be honest I couldn’t tell you XD I didn’t kept the email as I wasn’t really into thoses she showed me.. but you probably know them already as that person was in your circle aswell (the one you asked if you could forward my email in the contact form) so she probably contacted you aswell, I imagine.
Ahhh!! Right those ones Haha.
The one that intrigues me, just because of the name, is Steampunk. I have no idea what that is. I also have no clue what ownvoices is.
Ownvoice is a book about a marginalized/diverse identity in a book that’s experienced by the author aswell. It was created from an hashtag on twitter.
I know what steampunk is but I just.. have no idea how to explain it ahah
Steampunk at its core is a melding of the victorian era and steam-powered design/ machinery. At least that’s my understanding of it and I’m a steampunk cosplayer
Thank you!
Thanks for explaining Ownvoice. I Googled steampunk and unfortunately, don’t think those books are for me. Too bad because I love the word steampunk.
Yeah its not for me either.. though the clothes looks so cool!
If you want a real-life example of Ownvoices: I’m a lesbian and am working on a novel about queer women. I would be considered an own voices writer and author because my characters come from my own life experience behind diversity.
Ahh thank you! And good luck with your novel!
Great post!
Graphic novels, from what I understand, can be one of two things.
1) something like Deadly Class or saga which only comes in graphic novel form. In other words it doesnt come out in single comic book issues like say umbrella Academy, walking dead or mother panic.
Or
2) every 12 comics or so… a comic series like umbrella Academy etc.. will wrap up an arc and be binded together in to a graphic novel form. For instance Umbrella Academy is currently on its last issue of the Hotel Oblivion arc.. that will be binded into the next “graphic novel” and be called hotel oblivion. The first was Apocolyptic Suite and the second was Dallas.
Mmmh.. thank you for that explication
I’m *pretty sure* I’ve got it straight but purists might correct me on the finer points.
I still don’t really know the difference between romance and contemporary books Also there’s books that are both YA and NA– so how do you categorize them 🙊 ‘m not sure there’s any new genres for me, though. Maybe Urban Fantasy?
What! Thats super wierd .. mmh well romance is love story, while contemporaries is « present day ».. though id agree most romance IS viewed as contemporaries xD
That’s why I’m always confused. Almost every book is romance AND contemporary so it’s hard to know which genre it belongs ‘more’ into, you know?
Yeah I absolutely agree.. having more than one genre is nice but at the same time,what counts as what, now ? erhh
MM ! I had never read romance bewteen men before. Honestly I didn’t even know it existed 😉
Fair enough ! I can see why, with our society .. I don’t think I had before blogging either aswell
I didn’t know what #ownvoices was until I became a book blogger either!! I saw it on twitter and was like what in the world?! I’m still not sure if I care if its own voices or not… but now I know and can take it into consideration. This is a neat topic Kristina!! ❤️
Thank you ❤️
Yeah, it can be more important for some and maybe not so much for the others 😅 the hashtag originated from twitter so honestly, im not sure since when it came along 🤔.. maybe it hasn’t been that long either? Im not sure.