Many readers tend to stay within one genre. They develop this comfort zone of reading for example only crime novels. But you shouldn't be hesistant to read other books.
I took Readers' Choice as way to read a lot of different types of books. For each assginment I tried to read something different. And I am glad that I chose to do this. By doing it, I was able to explore many different genres of books and found out that I enjoyed most of the books that I read.
Over the course of the year I read seven novels by various authors and one play by Shakespeare. The novels I read included: The Kite Runner, The Rainmaker, 11-22-63, Silverlinings Playbook, Sherlock Holmes, The All Americans, and currently Everyman. The genres for these books ranges widely from romance to courtroom drama to sports and historical nonfiction. I am glad that I got a chance to read all of these novels because I enjoyed most all of them.
One section of the class was to specifically read a book that was out of your comfort zone. When assigned this reading I did not even know what genre to choose seeing as to how I had pretty much been doing that all along. By then I had read books from about 5 different genres. But I soon found one genre that was definitely out of my comfort zone. This would be sports and historical nonfiction. So I chose to read The All Americans by Lars Anderson. And I am really glad that I chose to read it. I think that the book was very well written and had a great story. Seeing as to how the entire plot of the novel was based on real events that Anderson gathered over a few years, it really makes the story inspiring. If you are looking to read out of your comfort zone and do not usually read abou historical events like World War II, I would strongly suggest that you purchase a copy of The All Americans. 
However I did not enjoy all of them. The novel that I did not enjoy was 11-22-63. While the first part of the book was good there were many things that could have been left out. King went into way too much detail about some aspects of the novel like the love interest and including so much detail on how the maincharacter tracked down Lee Harvey Oswald. But the worst part of the book was the ending. I will not give anything away but the ending of the book was so terrible it makes you angry you even read the book at all. I would strongly suggest that if you ar thinking about reading this book that you skip it.
So if you are thinking of what to read next, take a moment to contemplate if you have a comfort zone and what it would be. And then find a book that is not in it but sounds like one you would enjoy. You may like it and you may not, but atleast you tried something new.
I'm in the same boat as you, Jackie. Coming into Reader's Choice this year, I was someone who would mainly only read romance or young adult novels, but I was open to stepping outside of my comfort zone by taking this course. I agree with your view on 11/22/63, it was lengthy and way too detailed, but it was a different type of book for me to read. I usually would never pick up a book that long, none the less a historical fiction novel. But, it was good to try something new. One book outside of my comfort zone that I did enjoy however, was The Collector, by John Fowles. It was a horrer/thriller novel about a young woman being stalked and kidnapped. I was reluctant to read it at first since it was so different to anything else I had ever read, but I turned out to really like it.
ReplyDeleteWhen making senior schedules last year we were told about the new half-year class for English, Readers' Choice. I was never a big reader, but I figured, why not? I could read books we, the students, found appealing to us that could open up likings for different genres. It is always interesting to hear about all different kinds of books read from all of the Readers' Choice classes, not just your own. With so many students with many different choice options, you could get recommendations on what to read as well as what books weren't too good. At first, I was a little annoyed that our last choice book had to be out of our comfort zone, but I'm glad that it was. I was never a fan of romance novels, or books, and this assignment changed that for me. I ended up reading "The Last Song" by Nicholas Sparks and realized he doesn't overdo romance in his novels and now I'm considering reading some of his other novels.
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