Blogmas Day 4 // Mood Reading

Welcome to Day 4 of Blogmas! See how well I'm doing with keeping on track? It's definitely not because I've been having bulk blogging days so I can ensure each post is ready on time... All fun aside, I'm really enjoying getting to spend more time on the blog and working on my writing skills. Enough of this, let's get on to today's topic!

So, I don't know about you, but I feel like I have to be in quite a particular mood to pick up specific books. For example, autumn and winter are the times for cosy contemporaries and epic fantasies whilst spring and summer is when the lighthearted YA comes more into season. Obviously, my entire reading style doesn't fit into this and I'll often read different genres throughout the year, regardless of whether the weather suits it. But, recently whilst picking out the different books I wanted to read, I realised that I was swaying away from literary fiction in particular.

Literary fiction isn't my first choice of genre, but I've found so many excellent books that belong to that category so I'm always willing to give it a go. However, to me, literary fiction speaks of knowledge and intellect, which to some extent it does. Despite this, you don't need to be seriously intellectual to enjoy these books. Currently, on my TBR I have several literary fiction novels (both in Kindle and physical format) that I seem to keep putting off from reading. Why? I think it mainly comes down to the way I view them mentally, but also due to their size. Whilst literary fiction can be anything from modern day romance to a historical thriller, they always seem to pack a punch larger than the 400 or so pages they take up. I'm not sure I want an emotional punch every time I finish a book. That could get quite draining.

Instead of braving the literary fiction, I've turned back to YA (which I still love) so that I can experience stories without finding the content too draining. Obviously, I'm not saying that YA has no substance, many of the YA books I read do pack emotional punches and make me cry and laugh; but what I'm trying to say is that because of the age of the characters, the authors tend to make the trauma a little more bearable. Maybe this could be a whole other discussion?

For the end of this year, and following into next, I'd like to brave a little bit more of the literary fiction I own and dive into more worlds. I guess this isn't really about mood reading, but about growing up in books and what to look for. I think I'd like to do an in-depth discussion on this idea of growing up with reading in a future blog post, probably not this Blogmas, though.

Thanks for reading,

Amelia x