Musing Mondays (56) Favorite Genre Characteristics Part #1

Musing Mondays is a weekly meme hosted by Jenn at Books and a Beat, that asks you to muse about something book related each week.

My Musings for the Week...

Random Weekly Question from July 4th:What is your favorite book title?

Actually, this is a good question. I have a lot of favorite book titles, mainly because some of them were just catchy while others come from books I genuinely enjoyed. Plus some titles are a combination of both while also entirely fitting for the story they're attached to. So, I'll drop a short list of a handful of my favorites below...

• Daughter of Smoke & Bone
• Days of Blood and Starlight
• Illuminae
• Love Fortunes and Other Disasters 
• Love Charms and Other Catastrophes
• The Diviners
• A Wind in the Door
• Wintersmith
• Ironside
• The Iron King

Other Musings...

After writing out the majority of this post, I realized how long-winded it turned out to be. I thought this was going to be a shorter post an easier one to write, but the actual length burst my original estimate by a mile. In light of that, I’ve decided to divide it between two Musing Mondays post. So, expect part 2 next week.

Anyway, today, I’m here to talk about some of my favorite genre characteristics. When done right—or just given a fresh twist—I think any common characteristic can be used effectively to enhance a novel, rather than detract from it.

Paranormal & Urban Fantasy

Oh, this is a good one. I read paranormal novels just for the heck of it. I have enjoyed a lot of books from this subgenre. It has a lot to offer. What I like most about it is finding new authors who use common characteristics of paranormal creatures and conflicts and put a good spin to them. It’s all in the use. So, it doesn’t matter the similarities a given book might have with another as long as there’s something about the book to set it apart. A good example of this one is The Night Has Teeth by Kat Kruger.

Science Fiction (Sci-fi) (Space Opera)

Science fiction is another favorite genre of mine. This one is a little easier to describe since I mainly look for a couple of things—technology, and the what if such and such situations about some topic. I like the ships, the battles in space, and the adventurous aspect combined with futuristic elements. I’ve also enjoyed books with more of a focus on the scientific aspect like The Martian. In retrospect, it doesn’t only have to focus on the science aspects. If topics like social issues come up, I wouldn’t mind seeing a story like that set against the backdrop of space or some alien civilization.

I’m going to end this part of the post here. Next week, I’m going to go into what I like about fantasy and contemporary, which will bring this set of posts to a close. What are some of your favorite genre characteristics?