Genre

What's a genre? Merriam-Webster defines the word as "a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content". Genre is similar to the words kind and sort, and is pronounced 'zhän-rə' (that 'ə' is the sound the 'e' makes in the word kitten).

Refer to the following genre guide as you get started on your book or movie review.

Genre Categories

Action: Think Adventure! Stories of survival, police or military action, Westerns, sports, mountain climbing...Get the picture?

Classics/Literature: These books may fall into other categories as well, but are so well-known that we lump them into this catch-all category. Many (but not all) are older books. This category also includes poetry and plays.

Comedy/Humor: These are books meant to make you laugh: stories about funny situations, or stories told in a humorous way.

Contemporary fiction: This is a general category in which the stories take place in recent times, and are about generally normal situations and characters.

Fantasy: Stories set in imaginary, magical worlds, with fantastic creatures, talking animals, make-believe places, magical spirits. Dragons and wizards and fairies live here, among many others.

Graphic Novel/Comic Books: Use this category for illustrated novels, manga, comic books, graphic novels. There are also non-fiction graphic works, like Art Spiegelman's MAUS which detailed his father's experiences in a WWII concentration camp.

Historical fiction: Stories set in a particular historical period. While the events may have happened, the characters and stories surrounding them are fictionalized in this genre.

Non-fiction/Biography: These are true events and real lives: things that really happened and people who really lived. Includes books about current events, true crime, health, cooking, celebrities, writers, and wherever else your interest takes you!

Horror: The authors in this genre know how to get into your head. All about those things that go bump in the night, from the gory to the mentally scary.

Mystery/Suspense: These books keep the reader guessing to the very end when you finally learn "whodunnit?" with help from private I's, police detectives, and other curious people.

Romance: All about love, these books focus in on relationships, mainly those between women and men.

Science-Fiction: Stories that take place in space, in the future, or in some other alternate reality involving space ships, aliens, and advanced technology.