I am always fascinated by how one person may love a particular book, but another person finds that it isn’t their cup of tea. So, I thought it would be fun to have a lighthearted discussion about what personally attracts and repels us from all the different types of books out there!
At first I thought it would make sense to discuss by “genre”, but there are so many subgenres or general tropes that could be talked about too that I suggest we have a free-for-all! Anything goes! What are the things you love and hate, and why!?
I’ll go first!
Favorite types of books
Literature or belles-lettres (whatever we want to call this, 純文学/순문학 in JP and KR)** - Reading books from this genre feels like working on a large puzzle. I like the experience of looking for the hints and clues from the author about what they were trying to say and thinking about my own interpretation. By the end of the book I end up with an image (not always complete though if the books hard to understand ) that’s unique to me!
Romance with slice of life elements- When the characters take trips or go out to eat it can feel like hanging out with friends. I also get to indulge my nosiness in other peoples lives without actually being nosy in real life.
Short stories -I love how it’s possible to read one in one sitting! Usually the writing is snappier than a long novel and you get the satisfaction of a conclusion plus the emotional impact in fewer words. It’s fun seeing how the author can pull that off, too!
Bad people doing bad things” books- The fact I know it’s fiction lets me enjoy the exciting drama but at low stakes. If it gets stressful, I can always see the book down and come back to it later!
Least favorite types of books
Cozy or “healing” books- I don’t dislike them, but this type of book often fails to keep my interest. I think I just like more conflict and excitement.
Whodunit type mystery novels with clues - I am bad at putting the clues together and feel uninterested. I always think, “when I get to the end of the story there will be a reveal and they’ll explain what happened anyways” so it also feels too predictable to me (I know, outrageous statement as someone who is a fan of the romance genre). I guess I just don’t care about the process of solving the mystery enough!
Extremely long novels/series - It always takes a long time to get to the meaty action in these and they can also be quite the time commitment. I’ll occasionally read a 1-3 volume series or longer book, but I stay away from anything that is 20+ volumes! (Except 本好き, which I shall slowly be reading forever…)
Oooh fun. I definitely have some faves and some I avoid. I suspect there are some people who are polar opposites of me as well
Favorites
Mystery. Obviously. I started learning Swedish just to get my paws on that sweet sweet Nordic noir and run the Japanese Mystery Book Club. I have my preferences within the genre, but overall if it’s mystery I’m probably interested
Thriller. Often intertwined with mystery but a distinct genre! I adore a good thriller that makes me race through the pages.
Cheating. I like to say that cheating is emotional violence, and if you look at the above two genres I’m a fan of literary violence
In the same vein as the three above - Terrible People Doing Terrible Things. This is a genre of people being petty and vindictive, miserable and mean. It’s usually chaotic and darkly humorous.
Also like @bungakushoujo I’m a big fan of Short Stories as evidenced by me hosting the Aozora Shorts Advent each December. A nice punchy short story is just so satisfying!
I suppose I like to exorcise (or maybe exercise? ) my demons through my media, so darker content appeals to me a lot despite never having cheated on or murdered anyone
Least favorites
Innocent romance. I need something more passionate
Slice of Life. It’s weirdly stressful to read a story where nothing bad happens
Most stories with a teen cast. I’m a little hesitant to add this as I have enjoyed some stories with a primarily teenage cast, but it’s been a turn off enough times that I’m more likely to turn away from it nowadays than not. I just can’t relate anymore and I find realistically written teenagers frustrating (why are you making such bad decisions?!) and unrealistically written teens…unrealistic
In English, I love the works of Brandon Sanderson. He writes such interesting worlds and magic systems. I also really liked The Wheel of Time when I read that a while ago.
In Japanese, of course this means 本好きの下剋上 | L31, which is amazing. I also really like the works of 上橋 菜穂子, though they can sometimes be a little more complicated that I want to deal with in Japanese. 獣の奏者 (1) | L34 is still one of my favorite Japanese books though.
Slice of life romance. Particularly for manga, I like reading a nice romance story. Many of the ones I read are yuri, but not all of course. For example, 現実もたまには嘘をつく | L21 and 雨夜の月 | L23.
Stories with gender bending elements (trans, crossdressing, gender swaps, etc). For example, 放浪息子 | L25 and オレが私になるまで | L21. Maybe I’ll make a list of these as well.
Least favorite types of books
“Healing” series, or more broadly slice of life when there’s little to no comedy or romance elements. I just find these to be so boring. ARIA | L24 is probably the one exception.
Episodic series. These also usually don’t keep my interest. (the exception being comedies)
Isekai light novels with male leads who are the “strongest” or “weakest” or “have some unique skill” or whatever “hook” each new series comes up with. The lead usually either has no personality (blank slate = easier to self-insert I suppose) and/or is a pervert, and usually gets all the girls despite having no personality and being a pervert. There’s pretty much no setup that would get me to run away from a series quicker than this.
Harems are not for me. More self-insert stuff that’s often just weird and creepy.
I’m hesitant to jump into a genre defining thing because I think even genres I dislike can have stories done well. And I’ve definitely found that not every story I like is one I like because of its genre being better.
Genre elements I like include:
Fantasy, mystery, horror, superheroes, slice of life, anything that seems to take a concept and commit to it well.
Genre elements I dislike include:
Hard sci fi, romance books with little to no hook, isekai that are playing color by numbers
Some of my favorite things I’ve ever read are The Count of Monte Cristo, which is about revenge being served to people who deserve it (until it isn’t), Worm, which is about doing the wrong thing for the right reasons (until it isn’t), and Ender’s game, which is about understanding other people (until it isn’t). I notice some of my favorite things tend to defy their genre or have some twist that unifies different things about it in retrospect.
Have you read Speaker for the Dead? I like Ender’s Game well enough, but I absolutely love Speaker. There’s just something about it that has me coming back to reread it every few years.
Sometime last year I had the bright idea to get the whole series in Spanish and English so starting around new years I read the sequels. I just finished Xenocide a couple days ago. Speaker is great, but it almost feels like a separate book completely I guess. I see why he wanted to write speaker at first but didn’t really have a central character that worked there until after writing Ender’s game some and working through a backstory. I’m curious how it ends now that the events of Xenocide have happened. With the nature of the Outisde, it feels like anything is possible, but what will these people actually achieve now that they better understand the universe some. Speaker seems to establish problems that take time to solve and aren’t easily defeated with the planet destroying gun. But that meant that it took more books to work on those characters and the consequences of those problems.
All basically within science fiction/fantasy/horror.
Favorite types of books
Stories that really dig into their concepts, or show how those concepts impact the characters/the world. 神さまのいない日曜日 | L33 is a really good fantasy example of this, where it has some fantasy things happening, and then really shows the implications. How would society change if the dead no longer stayed dead? What if a child were raised by dead people? What would the culture of a city of the dead look like? How do the living relate to the dead? Is it even wrong to kill people anymore? Is it wrong to make the dead permanently, actually dead if they would prefer to stay undead?
Vibes-stories - somewhat the opposite of the above but in a good way. It’s still exploring a world but it doesn’t actually answer the questions - it just gives you the feel of it. Recently I read ひとつ火の粉の雪の中 (新潮文庫 あ 81-1 nex) | L33, and it was very this - it isn’t a well-structured narrative, couldn’t really say I really understood what the author was pushing for here, but it got across the vibe of the world. A better known example (that is entirely different) would be ヨコハマ買い出し紀行 1 | L23.
Angst. This is a subset of the first one I guess, because it really needs to flow from the premise to be interesting - but I want to see the characters struggle, suffer, and doubt.
Least favorite types of books
This will basically be an inversion of the above.
Stories where the fantasy/science fiction stuff isn’t really important to what the story is fundamentally, at a thematic level, about. Shit like this: なぜ僕の世界を誰も覚えていないのか? 運命の剣 | L31 - it’s got fantasy/sci-fi trappings but it doesn’t have anything to say about them. If you swapped out the demons with aliens, or supervillains, or whatever - it wouldn’t really change anything. There is so much of this shit out there and it’s so difficult to differentiate it from books that do interesting stuff until you’re halfway through the book.
Just pointless stories, where you’re left wondering why the author decided that they needed to write this down. Things happen, but nothing of consequence. I think a lot of 癒やし系 falls in here - if it’s trying to be vibes but it doesn’t pull it off, and it doesn’t have anything else going for it either. Also just amateur-hour rubbish like 培養カプセルを抜けだしたら、出迎えてくれたのは僕を溺愛する先輩だった | L33, for example.
When the stakes don’t really matter. Either there aren’t really any stakes, like in the braindead power fantasy 俺TUEEE stuff, or the characters think something is at stake and are angsting about it but I the reader don’t think the author is actually willing to follow through. 「お前ごときが魔王に勝てると思うな」と勇者パーティを追放されたので、王都で気ままに暮らしたい 1 | L31 (aka Roll Over and Die) will be my example for that one - in theory should have ticked the boxes for me, but if you don’t believe the scary monster that the characters are all screaming about is actually going to hurt any of them, it’s just boring.
I don’t have particular genre that I don’t like - it always depends on the execution for me.
I enjoy short stories, but not every short story.
I don’t seem to vibe with Japanese whodunits because there is just very little characterization and human drama in them and it’s all about the puzzle but when human drama is in them, I do enjoy them.
I don’t enjoy typical contemporary romance, but make it BL or historical or messy and I have had some good experiences.
I adore 癒やし系 which is imo very different to what is known as “cozy” in English. I think a lot of people equate 癒やし系 with pointless slice of life stories but 癒やし系 is more about making you feel emotions and soothing those emotions by the end. But not every 癒やし系 book hits the same. I do enjoy books that make me cry or angry or giddy or …
The only thing I can avoid are typical 男性向け books (e.g. 娘じゃなくて私が好きなの!? | L24) because the depiction of women in those is… something… but that’s about it… though the line between 一般的 and 男性向け can be blurry.
I wished I had more categories that I know I’d dislike (it would shorten my TBR considerably) but apart from the heavy 男性向け stuff, I have yet to encounter a type of book/a genre where I don’t have at least one good experience.
That’s pretty much the same for me. Depending on how much of it there is compared to how interesting the plot is otherwise, I may still read it, but otherwise bleh. I read one 男性向け romcom in my life and hated every minute of it. I guess I can somewhat tolerate it more in manga form for some reason (probably because reading manga takes me way less efforts to read, so it’s a bit of “nothing of value was lost”), so as long as the premise is valid, I’d go with it.
Actually, I’m also fine if I like the main male character, which never happens in the kind of series mentioned by @Biblio, but can happen in 男性向け stuff in general, even rom-com (example 尾守つみきと奇日常。(1) | L22)
Fun topic!!! Like @SpiderWeb says, for me it’s all about the story. A good story transcends everything and I don’t pay a lot of attention to genre. I have some likes and dislikes in most genres. That said I have noticed some patterns and reading more slowly in Japanese has made these preferences more obvious to me:
Favorite elements
Cozy mystery - I enjoy something with great puzzle, mystery and novelty aspects, but safe in the knowledge that nothing in there will ruin my day (some things in my least favorites list below)
Short stories - especially in a foreign language as it’s just so satisfying to finish something. I find it’s a great way to explore new authors and uncomfortable topics in bite size amounts. Or even a feel good story that might be too sweet for a full novel length can be more enjoyable as a short story.
Adventure - I like themes of stretching limits and exploring.
Biography - I just love peaking into other people’s lives. A well-written biography normally has a lot of elements I love in other genres - a life story is often a collection of short stories and adventure after all.
Literary fiction - I mean the stories that just make me think about life and how it all works, and become more aware of and question my beliefs.
Comedy / Humorous daily life stories - Just some innocent entertainment and laughs. Like the book version of Calvin and Hobbes - sign me up
癒やし系 - one of my favorite discoveries in Japanese. I’m not sure I’ve really approached this in prose, though, so far just in manga.
I’m neutral on Sci-Fi and Fantasy, it totally depends on the story for me.
Least favorite elements
Crime - eek, I have a hard time stomaching violence as entertainment
Revenge stories - if the writer is asking me to empathise with revenge I go into a tailspin on ethical philosophising and end up angry or in despair. Revenge that is more nuanced is ok if incidental or viewed objectively. There are some great books that include revenge thoughtfully. But most approaches to revenge follow social norms without examination, which includes quite a high tolerance to a certain amount of “justified” revenge violence. It’s quite a normal widespread human instinct but I want to live in a world where humanity grows up past that, and books handling revenge according to current norms remind me I am not in that world. Enter despair.
Rough stuff - if the description needs blurred trigger warnings, it’s probably content I don’t want to dwell on. You can probably guess I’m not a fan of the Terrible people doing Terrible Things others have mentioned although I find it incredibly amusing that it’s a recognisable genre
Horror - I have really vivid dreams, so although I found it entertaining as a kid, I value my sleep too much now
Romance - not sure why, but I just get bored. If it’s incidental, fine. But if the whole point of the book/story is the romance, I check out.
School setting - not something I would have mentioned except at the beginner level there is a lot of that in WK clubs and it holds little interest for me. As others have said, though, I do have some exceptions. But as a general rule it’s a - meh.
This genre almost never has trigger warnings actually. It’s all about people being mean and petty but not actually violent. The best Western example I can think of offhand would be Mean Girls.
I like fantasy overall. I grew up reading so many books like HP, Narnia, His Dark Materials, etc. which really hold a special place in my heart. I read a lot of YA in English nowadays, mostly fantasy/romance/fiction/adventure.
I also like 癒やし系, funny to see so many divided opinions! But I prefer to read it in visual format (webcomic/manga) rather than as a book - I can understand it might be a bit boring otherwise.
Mystery or anything unexpected: I like not knowing where the story is going. As @mitrac mentioned, I love a cozy mystery as well.
Dislikes
Overdramatic stories: too much exaggerated drama for the sake of it is just a turn off to me. Eg. got into an accident, lost their memories, was cheated on, house caught fire, too much misunderstandings, etc. I read for enjoyment and sometimes as escapism, so I want to read mostly happy or inspiring stories I guess. No need for too much complicated drama or suffering, there’s already life for that.
Violence ‘porn’/drama: similar as above, an example being things such as Game of Thrones: people dying, killing, raping, etc. throughout the whole story. I just cannot get into this sort of books.
Horror: I’ve always been a scaredy cat, no horror for me.
School setting or too much teenager focused: I’ve grown out of it and the clichés associated.
Harem: also not really my thing, be it reverse/normal harem. Most of the times I find it too cheap or just not well written (too much self-insert, etc.), and hard to identify with.
This is a really interesting thread; thanks for posting it @bungakushoujo. I’ve been really enjoying reading everyone’s thoughts in regards to genre and whatnot; I love seeing the variety and the reasons behind it.
There are exceptions to most things I read, so I would say there aren’t any genres I stay 100% away from; I’m usually willing to try most anything if it’s got a strong enough rec. Here are my usual go-tos though:
Liked Genres
Fantasy: This has been my main genre for most of my life, to the point where, if presented with two non-fantasy books and one has fantastical elements and the other doesn’t, I’ll almost one hundred percent of the time pick the one with fantasy elements in it and give less of a chance to the one without. My sci-fi reading has not been nearly as heavy (you could even say it’s been fairly light), so that’s one genre I’d like to read more of.
Mystery: I think I actually started reading more mystery in English after participating in the Japanese Mystery club. I definitely liked the genre beforehand, though, so maybe most of my exposure was through mystery TV series? I’ll have to go back through my old books and see what I’m forgetting.
Nonfiction: Specifically nonfiction dealing with: history, language, or science. (With other fields being on a more case-by-case basis.) I sadly have not read any nonfiction in Japanese, whereas it has all but crowded out my fiction reading in English.
Liked Elements
BL Romance: I’m not usually much of a fan of romance-first books, but a genre book that happens to have BL romance automatically gets bumped up the “interesting” list. I’ve been quite happy to see more BL in regular English works; it’s always a treat to pick up a book for a different reason and see that. (Important note: a lot of times this only applies when it’s genre fiction, generally fantasy. MxM sci-fi with a political bent? College student finds love? Blah, boring.)
Disliked Genres
Romance: As mentioned before, I don’t typically have much interest in a book where romance is the whole and only point. (I suppose I haven’t read any/much romance-focused BL except for trash isekai which doesn’t count, granted, so maybe that wouldn’t apply?)
Cozy: Specifically the English publishing “cozy”; I just find them often pointless. Note that this doesn’t necessarily extend to 癒し系; I do still find some of that boring, but anecdotally less often than cozy stuff.
Disliked Elements
Angst/Sadness/Misery Porn: Just can’t do it. I demand a happy ending in a book where the characters aren’t tortured 90% of the time. (I am more flexible with this with pure Literature, though.) Example: pretty much everything I’ve seen of Robin Hobb.
Het Romance: specifically because I think I tend to have too-high standards and I never find anything I’m happy with. I’m also pretty tired of the “they have to fall in love” trope; just because there’s two people of the opposite sex in a room doesn’t mean they have to end up together, authors. Yes I’m a hypocrite because I cheer this on in BL.
Cross-dressing: I have never seen a book where this didn’t look like a bad idea at any glance, let alone first. Why read it when I know they’re going to get outed probably within the first five chapters?
Torture:
Fuzzy Thoughts
I really want to like short stories as a genre, but they’re so hit or miss for me that it feels dishonest to label them as a favorite. A good short story is heavenly; a bad one is an incredibly disappointing time-waster. :\
This feels both way too long and way too short. As always, this is never set in stone; if @bungakushoujo or someone recommends me a belles-lettres het romance consisting of dates in a small cafe where both characters have horrible lives and are actively terrorized by the barista, only to find out they deserve it because they’re dysfunctional wrecks of human beings, I’d probably still give it a go. Ending with them getting together while having learned absolutely nothing. (All given with the most boring and un-information publisher blurb imaginable, of course. “Jane is sad and meets Jack and realizes her life is about to change forever!1!!”) …This sounds like some of the books we’ve read here.
Oh same here actually I forgot about it. I read a ton of nonfiction in English and on a wide variety of topics, although not really in the self help sphere which I sometimes see grouped in. Like you I’m into science, history, etc.
I do read nonfiction in Japanese but it is more mentally taxing to do so (which will only lessen with practice so I guess I better get to it )
It’s been good fun reading everyone’s thoughts on this.
My own reading likes and dislikes tend to change based on the language I’m reading in but I wonder if this is more because I find it difficult to pick things up at my level, rather than any definite preference.
Mostly my reading preferences revolve around some sort of fantasy genre though I’ve covered a lot of sub-genres within that rather than sticking to certain ones. And I have read and enjoyed most other genres (horror must be on the tame side though). There has to be some sort of underlying story and character development though, and I find it boring if the characters are shallow.
I think my focuses are characters and world building. I will read tropes but they have to be executed well and I 'm unlikely to DNF a book unless it has some hard issues I refuse to read (mostly intense descriptions of things I do not want to read about). So far I’ve only DNF’d a few books and any of those in Japanese it has been due to not understanding, then I’ve went back to them afterwards.
Favourites:
Anything with a complex world especially if it has a magic system with concrete rules
Understandable villains (where I can totally see AND believe what caused their fall from grace)
Stories where the subtle clues for the twist are all there if you know where to look (I like puzzling these out)
I would say anything with Dragons but there are a few I refuse to read (GoT for one, even though I’ve watched the series)
Stories which bring back the wonder and awe I had while reading as a child
Comedies done well
Serials where each chapter or section is it’s own little short story
To a lesser extent:
Stories that teach morals and lessons
Least Favourites:
Anything with intense descriptions of sex, injury or abuse (especially sexual abuse or rape) - I have a vivid imagination and don’t need those kind of images in my head thanks
Stories with shallow characters who do nothing and learn nothing - I find these boring and disengaging
Characters who are unrealistic, act out of character without a suitable explanation or have no flaws
General Slice of life (there has to be something else other than romance or just going about your day to day)
Most Romance stories (generally, though there are a few I’ve read that were well done)
Plots that don’t make sense or have massive plot holes
Most Horror, especially if it’s too descriptive - vivid imagination + intense Horror = vivid nightmares
I’ll try most genres and if someone recommends something to me that’s similar to something I like, I will try it unless I know I don’t want to read it.
Rich inner lives of characters. Every now and then I sit down in public and look at people go by. Every one of them has at least as complex emotions, drives, wishes, regrets etc. as me — there are no NPCs. So it should be with a book as well, especially when the narrator can tell us what people think. Strong characters tend to do well with me because of this.
Rich surroundings, the world must feel lived in, the rules must be coherent even if made up. This is why fantasy and sci-fi has so much work to do upfront. On the other hand many contemporary books feel like they just skip the environment completely, taking place in some generic cookie-cutter setting. This would be ok for theatre, not for a book.
Mind-warping novelty. Challenge me, make me think, tell me something interesting I didn’t know. Play with the concepts you introduce. Put the fiction in science fiction. (Hannu Rajaniemi does this really well in The Quantum Thief.)
Show your craft. Write sentences and conversation that stops me in my tracks and reverberates in my mind. OK to be a bit more majestic than our own reality here. A hint of poetry never hurt a book, as long as the author knows how to wield the pen.
Philosophy — if you can sneak in some philosophy, I’m there for it. Don’t shy away from the Big Questions.
癒やし系, at least the little I’ve seen so far. Maybe more of a manga thing. (Not missing a chance to plug スーパーの裏でヤニ吸うふたり | L26 here.)
Dislikes
Cardboard cutout characters. Single-dimensional collections of tropes and memetics rather than anything approximating a real being. This is sadly very common with MCs, sometimes almost as if on purpose? I never want to self-project, so I don’t want a template.
High-school setting — I swear like 50% of all Japanese media somehow involves a school setting. My school related vocabulary is alarmingly large for someone who never attended a Japanese school. This whole 青春 obsession confuses me to no end. Life gets better every passing year… adults are usually more interesting characters.
Isekai — overused, just like previous point.
Transparent wish fulfillment, self-insertion — no need to elaborate, I guess?
Loli, shota — yep, creepy as hell even in supposedly benign circumstances. Thousand times worse if combined with previous point.
Now, I’d like to say I see a lot value in reading outside of one’s comfort zone. If you’re never reading trash you’re not reading widely enough. Discard the trash if it doesn’t redeem itself, or enjoy it with sufficiently low expectations.
Anything goes! What are the things you love and hate, and why!?
) that’s unique to me!
I guess I just don’t care about the process of solving the mystery enough!
(Except 本好き, which I shall slowly be reading forever…)
I definitely liked the genre beforehand, though, so maybe most of my exposure was through mystery TV series? I’ll have to go back through my old books and see what I’m forgetting.
College student finds love? Blah, boring.)
I’m also pretty tired of the “they have to fall in love” trope; just because there’s two people of the opposite sex in a room doesn’t mean they have to end up together, authors. 
