Book genres can be complex, with disagreement over where books fit and the existence of sub-genres. Fiction and non-fiction are the main categories. Non-fiction includes how-to, travelogues, autobiographies, biographies, self-help, and reference books. Fiction includes novels, westerns, mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, thrillers, horror, and historical fiction. Other genres include poetry, plays, short stories, and mixed media books. Simplified genres, like comedy and tragedy, have been used in the past, but the variety of genres means there is always something to read.
Book genres are a tricky issue because there isn’t total agreement on where some books fit into which genres. Within each genre, there may be several subgenres. Also, some books can fall into several genres at once: a sci-fi book with a lot of action can be a sci-fi, thriller, or action novel. Perhaps it’s best to start with the two main categories of books, which are fiction and non-fiction.
Within nonfiction are numerous genres of books. Some non-fiction books are “how-to” books that might teach a person how to cook, garden, or fix things around the house. Some other genres of books that are common in the non-fiction category include travelogues, autobiographies, biographies, and stories. There are also self-help books and many kinds that could be considered reference material, such as encyclopedias. Books of personal essays, which may or may not be autobiographical, can also fit into the nonfiction genre.
The genres of fiction books are numerous, and some books fall into sub-genres. Major fiction categories include novels, westerns, mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, thrillers, horror, and historical fiction. It can be easy to see why books might fall into several categories at once. Gone with the Wind is certainly historical fiction, but it is also a love story that contains some powerful action scenes. However, finding a basic definition of each genre, as follows, can be helpful in determining where a book is most likely to fit:
Novels tend to be stories that focus primarily on love and relationships and can take a single love relationship or an individual looking for love as their subject matter.
Westerns may be a branch of historical fiction, but they may deal more freely with life in the American Wild West, as it has been established.
Mysteries often have characters investigating crimes or various puzzles.
Science fiction tends to use some scientific data as the basis for stories and might focus on things like doomsday scenarios, future worlds, or space travel, just to name a few.
Fantasy may deal with various “unreal” or magical things, or things not possible in the real world, and may contain alternate worlds and/or mythical and fictional creatures or peoples.
Thrillers are sometimes called spy thrillers and might have themes where spies are involved in the investigation of various events, often on a global scale.
Horror may rely on elements such as supernatural, apocalyptic, or in some cases exceptionally blatant cases of murder or mutilation caused by humans or other sources.
Historical fiction invents characters or actions for a specific period of time and can tell the story of that period of time through fictional and non-fictional characters. A variation of this is the period novel, written during or after a certain time and particularly emphasizing what it was like to live in that era, with perhaps fictional characters as examples.
The above book genres are not exclusive to long fictional novels. The novel is just a thing that can be bound and read. Poetry, plays, short story collections, and even mixed media books such as comics or graphic novels each belong to their own genre, but they can also address the main themes of different categories of fiction.
Some people may want genres to be simplified, as writers and teachers like Aristotle categorized them in earlier times. He described two basic types of plays: comedy or tragedy. Others get excited about the various ways people can be inventive across book genres. The proliferation of different categories of books means that there is always something to read that someone might like.
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