Genre Stew

I am once again struggling with the concept of genres.  Back in 2016, when I was just getting going with this blog about books, I wrote a post about the difficulties of placing books into genres that were specific enough to help the reader predict exactly what type of book they were getting.  (You can read that post here.)  Well, here I am just over two years later, and I am STILL feeling angst over the whole thing.

My new predicament deals with Alternate History.  I guess I just never came across a book that fit into this category, except for a few books that could clearly fit into the Steampunk category, so that was easy.  Well, I just read a book that is only mildly steampunk-ish, but I think if I stuck it under that list, people who really love reading steampunk would be somewhere between vaguely and terribly disappointed (probably depending on how much they enjoy the actual history).  Any of the other books I read that were a take on history but not actual history, easily fit into the Historical Fantasy category.  This new one, not at all, because to me there has to be some magic in place, and I don't think the voodooed penny the girl wears around her neck really counts.

So, once again, I'm back to: Do I just lump it all under Speculative Fiction?  Do I take some of the books that I've placed into the Paranormal/Supernatural category out and move them over?  Do I lump Alternate History into my Historical Fiction/Historical Fantasy book list?  Do I go more general, using only major genres, or do I go more specific, using as many sub-genres as I think necessary to give an accurate picture of what the book is really like?  Oh, and my favorite, whose definition of all those genres is actually the right one, anyway?

Well, this afternoon I came across an online discussion about labeling genres, and someone called BruceB had this to say:

I’m one of those people often willing to point at several different taxonomies and say “I like ’em all, I’ll make stew.”

You know, that's exactly what I've been doing all along, only now, hearing it put so eloquently (ha ha), I feel so much better about it!  So I guess I'll just keep labeling the books with any (and every) sub-genre that seems to fit, and you'll keep seeing those books again and again on multiple book lists over there in the side bar.  And hopefully, instead of irritating my readers with too many labels, I'll make them glad that they can find just the thing they're looking for.  Happy reading!