Reading outside the lines
UQ authors and fans on why you should try new book genres – and where to start.
The UQ Alumni Book Fair
(29 April – 2 May 2022) offers 400 book categories, with titles selling for as little as $1. Why not make the most of it by expanding your reading horizons? Contact asked UQ authors and researchers why we should read their genre, and where to begin.
Crime
For Matthew Condon (BA ’82), award-winning true crime author and journalist, the crime genre is an irresistible looking glass through which readers can encounter the darkest corners of human nature.
“For most of us, crime is the ‘other side’ of life – the shadowy world, the one we’ve been warned, since childhood, to keep away from. Through crime books we get to peek behind the curtain. It can be thrilling. And yes, in some ways vicariously so.”
The recent explosion in popularity of true crime podcasts is testament to the strength of our curiosity toward the murky waters of violence and mystery. Condon, however, advocates for the written word as the ultimate expression of these stories.
“The human and societal emotions attached to crimes that don’t just have an immediate impact but ripple through generations is something only a full-length book can capture. To my mind, minutiae is everything in crime writing. And that can only truly be distilled in a book.”
Image: Anjanette Webb
Condon’s recommendation for crime sceptics and beginners:
“Any volume (and there are hundreds) written by the Belgian master Georges Simenon. He created the great detective Jules Maigret who solves puzzling crimes in Paris in the earlier half of the 20th century. The novels are short, but they are full of life and colour, often hilarious, occasionally brutal and always nail-biting.”
Condon’s all-time favourite crime text:
“The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer. Much of Mailer’s work is very much of its time but this epic book about the life and death of small-town American killer Gary Gilmore is told in sparse, timeless prose that is still as powerful today as when it was published in 1979. The Executioner’s Song may be non-fiction, but it reads as gloriously as a novel. As a result, it elevates true crime to an art.”
Science fiction
Sam Hammond (BA ’21) is an Honours student in English Literature in UQ’s School of Communication and Arts researching speculative fiction, and has been a passionate reader of sci-fi since childhood. She wants you to give it a go.
“Sci-fi is sometimes dismissed as pulpy or shallow, but the genre combines big ideas with a sheer sense of fun and runs the gamut from escapism, to comfort, to interrogation of things we assume to be true,” Hammond said.
Sci-fi has enormous cultural influence in film and television, but the surreal and spectacular quality that makes the genre so ripe for expression on screen also makes it uniquely suited to the page. The genre’s galactic scale and alternate realities can inspire new ways of thinking.
“Sci-fi is metaphors and what-ifs made literal. Because it isn’t bound by the laws of reality, the genre can experiment with alternative futures – and sometimes help us see that those ‘inevitable’ laws of reality aren’t so fixed after all.”
Hammond’s recommendation for sci-fi sceptics and beginners:
“Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth! The mix of necromancy, post-apocalyptic Christianity, childhood trauma, internet memes, complex relationships between women, anti-imperialism, and a heroine too busy thinking about boobs and swords to pay much attention to the worldbuilding could hook readers turned off by more conventional sci-fi.”
Hammond’s all-time favourite texts in the genre:
“An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon and The Outside by Ada Hoffmann. These books exemplify sci-fi’s potential to go beyond cool technological innovation and interrogate the role of scientific discourse in marginalising BIPOC, queer, and neurodivergent communities, and they engage deeply and bravely with structural change.”
Fantasy
Professor Kim Wilkins (BA(Hons) ’98, MA ’00, PhD ’06) is a Lecturer in Writing, Publishing, and 21st-Century Book Culture at UQ, and is also the author of a staggering 23 fantasy books.
Echoing Hammond, she recommends fantasy for its mind-expanding potential.
“In fantasy, many limits on the imagination are released. Reading it can prime the imagination to think beyond the probable to the possible, which is a valuable trait to have in a rapidly changing world.”
Professor Wilkins, who’s also a co-author of the new book Genre Worlds, warns us not to be put off by the more outlandish aspects of fantasy’s otherworldly settings, characters and creatures, nor to dismiss other genres for their more unusual idiosyncrasies. She argues that “those tropes that are so easy to make fun of – sexy billionaires or hard-boiled detectives or wizards with long beards – are actually sites of pleasure and connection between writers and readers. Reading is supposed to be fun.”
Professor Wilkins’ recommendation for fantasy sceptics and beginners:
“Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows. It’s a fantasy-heist novel, with a fascinating and diverse set of characters and a really original setting and aesthetic.”
Professor Wilkins’ all-time favourite fantasy text:
“It’s Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings of course. That’s the ur-text. It is poetry in motion, and I love it with all my heart, though it’s certainly difficult for a contemporary reader to get into. The language is archaic and the pace is glacial.”
Poetry
Professor Sarah Holland-Batt (BA(Hons) ’05, MPhil ’08, PhD ’19) is an award-winning poet, widely published poetry critic and commentator, and passionate public advocate for poetry.
To those intimidated by reading poetry, she prescribes patience, and embracing ambiguity.
“Some people have been taught to see poetry as an intelligence test – if they haven't understood it the first time, there's something wrong with them. But poetry is supposed to be read more than once to be understood."
"It would be a bad poem if you read it the way you read prose, understood it all, and there was nothing you wanted to return to, or ask a question about.”
Professor Holland-Batt also emphasises that poetry is far more accessible and universal than many people assume.
“I think poetry is something that most people love without knowing that they love it. The example I always give is song lyrics – everyone knows song lyrics off by heart and feels that their favourite song is speaking to them alone. Even people who say that they hate poetry will include a poem at a wedding, or a funeral, because they speak to something communal about human experience.”
Professor Holland-Batt’s recommendation for poetry sceptics and beginners:
“Antigone Kefala’s Fragments. Beautiful, very spare, very short, lyric poems, all about time passing, life passing, grief, loss, little moments of joy. They’re deceptively simple yet highly sophisticated and have a real beauty and philosophical intelligence to them.”
Professor Holland-Batt’s all-time favourite collections of poems:
“The Wild Iris by Nobel Prize-winner Louise Glück. An inventive meditation on the cycle of life and death and the profundity of how short our lives are. I also highly recommend any book by Elizabeth Bishop – her Collected Poems has been around the world with me.”
Register now for the UQ Alumni Book Fair, running from 29 April – 2 May 2022. It’s the perfect opportunity to snap up books you wouldn’t usually try for as little as $1, with all funds raised going to scholarships, research and teaching.
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