Walk into a bookstore today and you’ll see rows of glossy covers staring back at you. It’s a bit much, honestly. You’ve got your celebrity memoirs over here, your gritty true crime over there, and somewhere in the back, a dusty corner of "literary fiction" that feels a little too much like high school English class. People often talk about different kinds of books as if they’re just categories on a shelf. But they aren't. They’re different ways of processing the world.
Think about it.
The book you pick up when you’re heartbroken is fundamentally different from the one you grab when you’re trying to figure out how to manage a 401(k). We categorize them for convenience, but the lines are blurrier than Amazon’s algorithm wants you to believe.
The Fiction Divide: Genre vs. Literary
There’s this weird snobbery in the book world. You’ve probably felt it. It’s the idea that if a book has a dragon on the cover or a detective with a drinking problem, it’s "genre fiction," and therefore somehow lesser than "literary fiction." That’s mostly nonsense.
Literary fiction is basically character-driven. It cares more about how a person feels while they’re staring at a rain-slicked window than what actually happens next. Think of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day. Not much "happens" in the traditional sense, but by the end, your heart is in shreds. It’s about the internal landscape.
Then you’ve got genre fiction. This is the stuff that keeps you up until 3:00 AM because you have to know who killed the vicar. We’re talking:
✨ Don't miss: Green Emerald Day Massage: Why Your Body Actually Needs This Specific Therapy
- Thrillers: High stakes, fast pacing, lots of adrenaline.
- Fantasy/Sci-Fi: Building entirely new worlds with their own physics and social rules.
- Romance: The massive powerhouse of the publishing industry, built on the "Happily Ever After" (HEA) or "Happy for Now" (HFN) promise.
Is one better? No. Honestly, sometimes you need the intellectual challenge of a Woolf novel, and sometimes you just want to see a spaceship blow up. Both are valid. The problem is when we get stuck in one lane and forget that different kinds of books offer different mental nutrients.
Non-Fiction is More Than Just "Facts"
Most people think non-fiction is just textbooks and dry biographies. They’re wrong. Non-fiction is probably the most diverse area of the library.
Take the Memoir. A memoir isn’t an autobiography. An autobiography is "I was born, I did this, then I died." Boring. A memoir is a slice of a life. It’s Cheryl Strayed hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in Wild or Tara Westover navigating a survivalist childhood in Educated. It’s personal. It’s messy.
Then you have Creative Non-fiction. This is where journalists use the tools of a novelist—pacing, dialogue, scene-setting—to tell a true story. Truman Capote basically invented the modern version with In Cold Blood. It’s factual, but it reads like a fever dream.
And we can’t ignore the "Self-Help" or Personal Development sector. This is the stuff that actually moves the needle for a lot of readers. Whether it’s James Clear talking about Atomic Habits or Brené Brown deconstructing shame, these books are utilitarian. They’re tools.
🔗 Read more: The Recipe Marble Pound Cake Secrets Professional Bakers Don't Usually Share
The Rise of the "Hybrid" Book
Lately, we’re seeing a lot of genre-bending. Look at "Auto-fiction." It’s a weird, beautiful middle ground where the author writes a novel that is almost entirely true, but they change the names to protect the innocent (or the guilty). Karl Ove Knausgård’s My Struggle series is the poster child for this. It’s obsessive, detailed, and feels more real than most "true" stories.
Why Format Actually Matters
We spend so much time talking about the content that we forget the physical (or digital) vessel.
- Hardcovers: They’re the "prestige" format. Great for the shelf, terrible for reading in bed because they’ll break your nose if you drop them.
- Paperbacks: The workhorses. Mass-market paperbacks are those small, chunky ones you see in airports. Trade paperbacks are the larger, nicer ones.
- E-books: Some people hate them. I get it. You lose the smell of the paper. But you can carry 5,000 books in your pocket. For commuters, that’s a game changer.
- Audiobooks: Yes, they count as reading. Neuroscientifically, your brain processes the narrative similarly. If you’re "reading" while driving, you’re still engaging with the story.
The Reference and Coffee Table Giants
Not every book is meant to be read cover-to-cover. We’ve got reference books—dictionaries, encyclopedias (though Wikipedia killed most of those), and specialized manuals.
And then there are the "Coffee Table Books." These are large-format, image-heavy volumes meant for browsing. They’re about aesthetic and specific interests, like 1970s interior design or the history of Ferrari. They serve a different purpose. They’re about inspiration and conversation, not necessarily deep narrative immersion.
How to Actually Expand Your Reading Palette
Most of us fall into a "reading rut." We find one author we like and read everything they’ve ever written, then we look for "authors like X." It’s safe. It’s comfortable. But it’s also a bit stale.
💡 You might also like: Why the Man Black Hair Blue Eyes Combo is So Rare (and the Genetics Behind It)
If you want to get the most out of the different kinds of books available, you have to be intentional.
- Try the "Rule of Three": For every three books you read in your favorite genre, force yourself to pick up one from a category you usually ignore.
- Follow Award Lists, Not Just Bestseller Lists: Bestsellers tell you what’s popular; award lists (like the Booker Prize or the National Book Award) often tell you what’s pushing the boundaries of the medium.
- Read "In Translation": We tend to get stuck in our own cultural bubbles. Reading a contemporary novel from South Korea or a memoir from Nigeria gives you a perspective that a local author simply can’t provide.
The Actionable Bottom Line
If you feel like you've lost your "reading spark," it’s probably because you’re forcing yourself to read what you think you should read instead of what you actually need.
Stop finishing books you hate. Life is too short. If you're 50 pages into a "classic" and you're bored to tears, put it down. Go find a graphic novel. Pick up a slim volume of poetry. Grab a technical manual on woodworking.
The beauty of having so many different kinds of books is that there is always something that matches your current mental state. Your next step is simple: Go to your bookshelf, find the one book you bought because you thought it made you look smart but have never actually opened, and move it to the "donate" pile. Then, go find something that actually excites you, regardless of the genre.
Reading shouldn't be a chore. It’s an exploration. Go explore.