A Foodie’s Guide to Reading

If you’re like me, you have a favorite restaurant, and at that restaurant you have a favorite dish. And if you’re like me, you order that same dish every time you go to that restaurant (for me, it’s filet mignon from Gino’s Restaurant and Bar).

As a reader, we tend to do the same thing. I have authors and genres I like and generally stick to. Being an author, my list is probably a bit longer than most, but here are some of my author highlights: Stephen King, Kazuo Ishiguro, Octavia Butler, N.K. Jemisin and it goes on. As genres go, I mostly read science fiction and horror. But let me tell you what I did a few years ago that broadened my horizons.

I noticed how narrow my author list was, and how many new authors are coming up every year. Being an author myself, I wondered if I might be missing anything. Surely out of the 300,000 new books being published annually, there had to be someone in there who can give these great authors a run for their money. And frankly, my favorites are aging a bit, so where am I going to get my fix when they’ve quit writing?

So for three years, I closed my author list down, and I took a chance. I selected books by authors who were completely unknown to me, some at the recommendation at friends and family, but some I just selected at random. I left my favorite restaurants behind, and ventured into romance, consumed more literature, and even grabbed some mystery novels. And I’ve never looked back, because here’s what I discovered.

Romance novels get deep into the character’s emotions (at least the ones I read). This is a refreshing change of course from the relatively-emotionally-shallow science fiction genre. I love science fiction, but it’s a bit strange how the world is ending and people are still psychologically functional and oddly getting along in many staples of the genre when most actual humans would be huddled in a fetal position (which would make a lousy novel and probably is why it’s not done that way). With romance, I could wade through the murkiness of relationships in a way that other genres don’t allow. For a good sweet romance, check out Misty Dreams by Josephine Strand.

It was also during this time that I picked up my first novel from Megan Lindholm, The Wizard of the Pigeons, which coincidentally (and I was unaware of this when I bought the book) was arguably the first urban fantasy novel before there was such a genre. Traipsing into my less-read literary novels, I picked up Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, and although I haven’t finished it because frankly there’s so much happening that it’s a little difficult to follow, but I can see genius in the over-analysis of the lives of two cojoined twins who were separated at birth (born by a nun—scandalous).

Other novels I picked up during this foray include the Young Adult novel The Last To Die by Kelly Garrett. This one I was less than impressed with. I feel like the indy author Paityn E. Parque did a much better job with Madness if you want Young Adult wild ride (who, by the way, I interviewed when I was still doing Meet the Author podcasts).

I even stumbled across several greats you’ll recognize in my own favorite genres, but by more recent authors, like Patrick Ness who wrote The Knife of Never Letting Go and Cixin Liu, who wrote The Three Body Problem. I liken this to entering the same restaurant, and trying something new on the menu to see how it goes. In both of these cases, my mind was absolutely blown with the inventiveness and creativity in these science-fiction novels that touched at the core of humanity.

When it comes to eating (and reading), sure, it’s great to have that crème brûlée for the fifteenth time, but if you widen your horizons and look for other things on the menu, you might just find that Chocolate Lava Cake is exactly what your soul needs. It won’t make crème brûlée any less enjoyable, and trust me when I say there’s room in my heart for both!

My advice, and what I’d like you to consider taking away here, is that sure, eat at that one restaurant, and that one dish. But not all the time. Take a break, and make the intention, of trying out something completely different. Whether it’s another genre or another author, you never know where you might find that hidden gem that fills that need you never knew you had!