As a writer and a book-lover, I sometimes feel pressured to read and like all kinds of books. A while back I wrote a post on giving up on reading certain books, which is a way to respect your time a writer. It’s okay not to like everything. Everything was not meant for you to be read. And if you need to give up on reading a book that’s not resonating with you, you definitely should put it down and pick up something you’d enjoy more.

So today I wanted to admit what genres I don’t like and what books I almost never pick up. There are always exceptions, but for the most part these are the genres I avoid:

Classics
When I think of classics, I think of the books I was forced to read in high school that made me hate reading for a while. I just have so much trouble connecting to stories written so long ago. Plus the different styles of writing make most of these books a struggle for me to read. I much more enjoy contemporary stories, even though there are a couple exceptions on my favorites shelf.

Poetry
I’m sorry, but I don’t like poetry. I prefer straight-forward writing, and so I find poetry extremely difficult to get into. I don’t hate all poems, but I usually won’t pick poetry up by choice.

Horror, Thrillers, and Westerns
I’m grouping these together because I don’t have much experience reading any of them. But none of these genres hold any appeal to me.

Urban Fantasy
I’m honestly surprised I don’t like this genre because I enjoy that feeling of mixing past and present. Urban fantasy does this by setting magical elements (which you typically think of as belonging in fairy-tale-like settings) into a modern environment. But every book I’ve tried in this genre just hasn’t seemed to click with me. I think I just prefer fairy tales too much.

These books are a few of the exceptions in these genres that I actually do enjoy.

What are the genres that you don’t like? Next week I’ll be talking about my favorite genres, so look out for that!