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We tried to get some less-mentioned genres, so makes sense, but you can interpret them widely. Legolas Send a noteboard - 03/01/2011 06:23:43 PM
I would really like to try this because it would open me up to several genres that I don't typically read. But what are some examples of books in the Family Chronicles and Surrealist genres? I think the others are fairly straight forward, if as someone mentioned earlier, subjective. But these are not genres I am familiar with, at least not by those names.

For family chronicles, as someone pointed out in an earlier thread, a book like Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude would qualify, but so would less high-brow works like Colleen McCullough's Thornbirds, Edward Rutherfurd's Sarum, and many others. Wikipedia's article on the subject (called "Family saga" there) even lists some books I wouldn't have thought of categorizing as such, like Zadie Smith's White Teeth (which I reviewed here, it's a phenomenal book) or Frank Herbert's Dune. In short, the description covers pretty much any book that has multiple generations of one family as main characters and covers a certain timespan.

"Surrealist books" can also be interpreted in a number of ways. It could mean books that are mostly set in the "real" world but have some surrealistic or magical elements - some of Eco's and Rushdie's books would definitely fit that description, Thomas Pynchon's books fit as well, and one could make a good case for Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. But you could also take it further and go for books that have a setting that is quite different from our world, or have tons of surrealistic elements, like Kelly Link's marvelous short stories (one could also classify those as horror, I suppose, or at least some of them). Or even books that don't necessarily have any particular element that is magical or unreal, but still manage to create a certain surreal atmosphere, such as Carson McCullers' lovely Ballad of the Sad Café.

So, yeah, you're quite welcome to interpret those genres in whichever way you prefer, if that helps you find books that you think you'd like to read more than the obvious choices. These are just a few suggestions (not all of them books that I've actually read, mind you).
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