Book Tag | Out of my Comfort Zone

Kathy recently did this really fun tag and at 1.30am when I couldn’t sleep I thought ‘what better way to spend the early hours of the morning’. As you might have noticed I tend to read a lot of science fiction. The one rule of this tag is that you have to choose one genre you frequently read and you can’t use any books from that genre to answer the prompts, so it will be an interesting exercise for my semi-tired brain!

A book that is an exception when it comes to genres or elements you don’t typically like:

This one is fairly easy because I wrote the review for it yesterday so retelling’s are currently on my mind. I’m usually not a fan at all of retelling’s as I’ve found that authors can fall into lazy habits of simply rehashing the original story without adding anything new (and sometimes just ruining the entire story). So far though I’ve enjoyed both of Aliette’s retelling’s – In the Vanishers’ Palace which is a f/f Beauty & the Beast retelling and The Tea Master and the Detective, a Sherlock Holmes retelling with a Vietnamese woman as Sherlock & a ship AI as Watson!

 

A book you enjoyed from a genre you previously held some stigma against:

This one was quite tough to think of and I didn’t want to choose another fantasy book (fantasy was always my go to hate to love book genre) as it was too easy. One genre that I always used to hate but now really love was historical fiction! At school we were often forced to read classics, which I hated at the time, and it put me off of historical fiction as well. However, I was given a copy of Fingersmith by an older queer friend when I came out and it completely opened my eyes (in more ways than one). I definitely credit Fingersmith for breaking my historical fiction stigma.

 

A book you didn’t know was out of your comfort zone until you started reading it:

I requested Trans Liberty Riot Brigade when I was going through an experimental phase on Netgalley and loved the sound of this dystopian book with intersex main characters, branded as social “transgressors” for refusing sex reassignment surgery. Sadly though this book was waaaaaaaaaaay out of my comfort zone. I usually avoid DNF’ing books but I couldn’t read past 5%. The book was much more ‘grimdark’ than straight up dystopia, used lots of queerphobic slurs, graphic references to genitalia and drug use.

 

Pick a friend who motivates you to pick up books you might not normally be interested in—is there a book they convinced you to give a try?

This one is easy – Destiny! Me and Destiny have a lot of cross-over in terms of the books we both enjoy but I know that Destiny is also a complete horror fiend and horror is a genre that is very not my kind of genre. Having followed Destiny for well over a year though and seeing all of her great recommendations & reviews I have become more and more intrigued about horror books. I’m not sure if I could survive most of them, but I am definitely more interested in picking up Asylum because of her ❤

 

A book that is out of your comfort zone, but you would like to read:

Yes, yes I know this one is fantasy but from what I understand of Jen Williams’ books they are much more high fantasy than the fantasy I am used to. I have only recently begun to read fantasy because the only fantasy I was ever exposed to as a teenager was the high fantasy my friend read and I literally had no interest in it. Jen Williams was at SFX Book Con 2 and I’m quite interested in giving The Ninth Rain a try even though its out of my comfort zone!

 

A book or genre so outside of your comfort zone that you’ll probably never give it a chance:

Anything to do with crime or thrillers! I literally have no interest in either of those genres and doubt I will ever give it a proper chance. I did try reading a crime novel my best friend forced me to read when I was 15 but it was so awful and every time I look at crime and thriller books they just bore me to death with their covers. Sorry!

I challenge:

Norrie | Grey | LaRonda | Aurora | Becca

This tag was much more fun than I had anticipated but it did also take me well over an hour to write it haha. It’s now 3am and I’m no less tired, if anything I’m more excited to read these books!

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