“Everything you want is right outside your comfort zone,” says writer, Robert Allen. It’s quite true!
If you’re settling for something and you are satisfied, that means you aren’t doing anything different and you’re staying within your comfort zone. Adventure a little farther and you’ll find yourself enjoying things. This goes for life, but also for things like reading. It’s hard to be knowledgeable about books as a whole is when you just read one genre of novels.
I’m quite guilty of doing just that. I tend to only read young adult fiction books, because it’s the only age level that appeals to me. Adult books tend to not have as much adventure and substance for me. Within the young adult genre, I’m quite the adventurer. I will go from reading a dark gothic book, to a light-hearted contemporary, back to a medium dystopian. My range is all over the place. There are a few genres that I’m afraid to delve into of course.
Recently, I’ve expanded some of my horizons within the young adult genre. For a couple of years, all I read were paranormal or dystopian novels. I rarely ever read a contemporary novel, but soon picked them up. Now, contemporaries are some of the most read novels of mine. Along with contemporaries, I never read high fantasy novels. Anything with dragons, kingdoms, and other magical lands never interested me. After a couple of amazing high fantasy novels, I’ve slowly become intrigued by them and find myself picking them up some more.
After reading a broader spectrum of novels, I now find it easier to talk about books with people. Someone brings up a book under the high fantasy category, and now I don’t have to say “Oh, that sounds really good!” and try and fake my way through the conversation. Instead, I can honestly say, “I haven’t read that one yet, but there was another great book within the same genre!” It just is a much better feeling not having to pretend to have read books within a genre.
Since I’ve started reading outside of my “safe-genres” as I like to call them, I’ve become more well-rounded with my genres. It makes my life as a book blogger much easier, because I’m not ALWAYS blogging about just one genre or theme. Overall, I’m glad that I decided to branch out from my “safe-genres” and indulge in something new! I’d advise you to do the same!
