Genres I Want to Read More Of In 2021

Posted On February 4, 2021

As a reader, it’s always a good idea to be expanding your horizons and reading many different types of books. Now, don’t get me wrong—I love YA. I love fantasy. I’m never going to stop reading those genres. They’ll probably take up the majority of the books I read this year and in future years.

However, I have a bad habit of getting into something of a rut with my reading. I’d really like to break out of that this year. One of the ways I want to do that is by trying some new genres.

Today I thought it would be fun to talk a little about two of the genres/categories I want to try to read more of this year. Plus, I’ll talk about a few of the books within that genre that I’m most interested in. So let’s get started!

Genre #1: Classics

I know that classics aren’t really a “genre” per se, since classics can come in all kinds of genres, but they’re a category that I want to get into more. I haven’t read many classics since I was in school, but I do have some that I want to at least give a try.

One of the classics that I really want to read this year is The Lord of the Rings, which I already talked about a few weeks ago in my post on the backlist books I want to get to. And yes, I know that The Lord of the Rings is fantasy, and I just said that one of my goals for this year is to broaden my reading horizons and read stuff other than just YA and fantasy.

But I figured I need to start somewhere. It might be a good idea to start with classics that are close to the kinds of things I like to read, and then branch out from there. Like I’ve mentioned before, my biggest qualm when it comes to reading Tolkein, and classics overall, is the writing style.

The prose in most classic novels really likes to let you know that it’s there. It’s beautiful and lyrical and sometimes very dense. As someone who generally prefers window-pane prose, reading pages and pages of description is a hard sell for me, no matter how beautiful that description is.

I know that it’s something that you just have to do. The more classics you read, the easier it is to get into the writing style and enjoy the story. It’s just difficult for me to force myself to do that when there are so many modern books that I can read instead.

Classics on My TBR

However, I do have some classics on my TBR that I want to read, so here’s a quick list of some of those (other than The Lord of the Rings, obviously):

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Jane Austen’s novels (I read and liked Pride and Prejudice a long time ago, but not any of her others)

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (preferably in the original French, though I don’t know how that’s gonna go).

Genre #2: Nonfiction

This is another genre that’s pretty broad, I know. But considering that I read basically no nonfiction whatsoever, I don’t know a ton about the genre breakdown for nonfiction.

In the past, I haven’t typically read much nonfiction because I usually use my reading time as escapism, and if you’re reading about things that happened in the real world, it’s a lot more personal. Plus, I usually find nonfiction to be kind of dry and boring. But I imagine that’s mostly because the vast majority of my experience with nonfiction comes from textbooks, which are not exactly designed to be engaging.

I’d really like to read more books about writing craft, and about history. I love learning, and now that I’m not in school anymore, books are a great way to keep my education going.

Here’s another quick list of some nonfiction books I’m interested in reading:

On Writing by Stephen King

The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson

Gods and Robots by Adrienne Mayor

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So there you go! Two genres that I want to read more of in the coming year! Will I succeed? Who knows, but I hope so! If you’ve seen my post about backlist books I want to read and new releases I’m excited for, you know I’ve already got a fair amount of books on my TBR for the year. So we’ll see how this goes.

Down in the comments, feel free to let me know what genres you want to read more of! Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you soon!

-Ariel