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The topic of the day is genre fiction.  What do you read and what draws you to that genre?

I read just about anything.  I don’t really consider the genre when I select a book.  It makes me a bit crazy to read blogs that only focus on one type of book.  I think everyone should branch out and try multiple things to broaden their reading.

I do have one genre prejudice though.  I don’t like cozy mysteries.  These are the books where a non-law enforcement type person solves crimes.  I love supernatural and paranormal books (and even ones with mysteries) but I can’t suspend disbelief enough to read cozy mysteries.  Here’s what’s going through my mind the whole time:

  1. A normal person does not run across a dead body in the course of their day.  If you find yourself face to face with dead bodies often, you are probably a serial killer yourself and I hope someone figures it out and arrests you.
  2. Somewhere in the course of all these books the main character decides to withhold some key fact from the police until she follows up on it herself.  This is called obstruction of justice and I keep hoping someone will arrest her.

But no one ever arrests the main character in these books so I end up disappointed.

What do I like?  I tend to read a lot of books with witches and superpowers and magical stuff.  Some of my favorites are:

The Women of the Underworld series by Kelley Armstrong. This has witches, werewolves, necromancers, and sorcerers. I like the way the series builds by making the next book about a peripheral character in the previous book.

The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. Harry Dresden in the only wizard in the Chicago phone book. The series starts with him working private investigation cases and helping the police with “strange” cases but it builds into so much more. The audio productions are amazing.

The Hollows series by Kim Harrison. In the 1960s the human population is decimated by a disease in genetically modified tomatoes. Now that they aren’t outnumbered vampires and witches and werewolves and others start to live openly. Rachel Morgan is a witch who starts to develop unusual powers over the course of the series.

What do you read?  Do you stick to one type of book or all you all over the place?