Armchair Bea: About Literary Fiction

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Emily of Emily's Reading Room

Literary Fiction EEEEKKKK! * runs off* was my reaction as a teenager. For me literary fiction where books written by Dutch authors who always managed to use that one word of which I did not had a a clue what it meant because it was never used in a normal Dutch conversation. After looking it up in a dictionary I would find out what the word would mean and other synonyms and wonder for the rest of the day why the author choose that one word. As this happened in every second sentence it could take me ages to get trough the book. It took me a long time to get over that image.

I am still scared to qualify books as literary in my head because I am afraid I will like it less just because of that genre qualification but I am not that scared of picking them up anymore.
I have read several books this year fitting this category. Some better than others. My favorite so far was Heading out to Wonderful by Robert Goolrick.

I think one of the biggest misconceptions the genre is dealing with is the definition "it has to mean something and make you think" that sounds very heavy and it is not the relaxed escape all my world problems wish a lot of readers have. On the other side there are books that make me think or mean something to me that no one would qualify as literary fiction.

I do not really keep an eye on this genre though and usually pick up these books by accident. I do however participate in the Literary Giveaway blog hop organized by Leeswammes to get more feeling with the genre but also because I am curious what other givers qualify as literary. I love to see the variety of books on offer. Which makes me curious about your favorite "Literary" fiction books.

Leave me the title of the book that touched you most and kept you awake for three days after finishing it in the comments please!!

Do no forget to visit the other people participating today Genre Post: Literary Fiction

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