Post 5: My thoughts on Genres

When talking about books, we often think of one thing: genre. But sometimes the question arises; Do we really need genre. Are all the rules separating different themes and styles of writing really necessary? Or can we just let stories be stories with no bounds or limits?

 The author David Shields asks do we need lines between genres—do we need to label something fiction or non-fiction? I think he has an excellent point. When we talk about a book, we talk about it's content, as in the characters, the plot, the settings and descriptions. Often, the genre is not needed. But at the same time, we can't just lump together everything from an instruction manual to the Bible to Harry Potter into one category: books. We need some form of line drawn in to keep our books categorized and organized.

 To argue for genres, however, is history. Since humanity started keeping books, we've organized them. From giant libraries to small collections, stored books have been categorized by their length, plot, author, ect. But the important thing is keeping books separated. Without genre and other boundaries we would have a giant blob of anything written called literature. So in the end, we need genre. It helps to stabilize literature and knowledge, and therefore us.