My current reading list is dreadfully academic in nature, I’m afraid. There’s the stuff I’m reading for class, obviously-Hobbes’ Leviathan, Locke’s Two Treatises of Government. But for pleasure I’m reading Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (excellent so far-I’d recommend it to anyone, not only because it’s extremely important material but because Snyder has a terse, efficient way of writing that makes a 400-page book seem very approachable) and, off and on, Francis Fukuyama’s Origins of Political Order. Somewhere off on the back-burner Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go has been lingering for a while.
I submitted a query letter, via online form, to a literary agency yesterday. A couple of the fields on the form gave me pause-one asked which book I was currently reading, another asked which author had influenced me the most. I thought it was a nice, neat way for the agency to get a feel for prospective clients’ tastes. So I put my answers: Bloodlands in the first field, Ernest Hemingway in the second. But it got me thinking. Here I am trying to break into the fantasy market, and yet I have not read a fantasy book for-well, for a long time. In fact, the last recent fantasy book I read was probably one of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series-and one of the earlier ones, at that.
I’ve become something of a snob when it comes to the fantasy genre. I’ve prided myself on avoiding the ubiquitous Game of Thrones craze-I haven’t watched the HBO show at all, and I only managed to get a few chapters into A Game of Thrones when I started it a couple years ago, despite having it repeatedly and enthusiastically recommended to me. I’ve prided myself, likewise, on avoiding the Hunger Games craze. And pretty much every other fantasy craze to come along in recent years.
In short, I’ve gotten out of touch with the genre. Pretty much since I started college I’ve given all my reading time and attention to Hemingway and Orwell, Fitzgerald and Huxley. Which is all well and good, right? These authors wrote literature. Literature with a capital L, guys.
The only recent popular fiction I’ve read at all is the unfinished Ishiguro I mentioned above. I’ve thumbed my nose at recent fiction and contented myself with reading books by guys who’ve been dead for at least fifty years.
And yet here I am trying to market a fantasy novel.
This is problematic, I think. I don’t think I should eschew my Hemingway and Orwell to read every new Sookie Stackhouse that comes out-I’m not saying that. And I don’t want to compromise and change my vision or style simply to fit a quickly passing trend (I’ve heard dystopian is already on its way out, guys). But if I’m serious about getting published-and I am-I need at least to have a feel for the market, right? I need to know what readers expect and I should make room on my reading list accordingly.
What do you guys think?