People who would never sneer at sci-fi and murder mysteries have no trouble damning the whole romance genre without reading one.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I do try not to spend much time reading in the suspense genre.
The funny thing is, though I write mysteries, it is the one genre in adult fiction I never read. I read Nancy Drew, of course, when I was a kid, but I think the real appeal is as a writer because I'm drawn to puzzly, complicated plots.
There's more fiction in my life than in books, so I don't bother with them.
I don't think the problem is that people don't read enough mystery books, but that people don't read.
It seems to me that good novels celebrate the mystery in ordinary life, and summing it all up in psychological terms strips the mystery away.
I still tend to read more urban fantasy and romance than science-fiction, but every once in a while, a couple of books will come along and knock my socks off.
I'm snobby about books that aren't crime fiction: if I start reading a literary novel and there's no mystery emerging in the first few pages, I'm like, 'Gah, this obviously isn't a proper book. Why would I want to carry on reading it?'
I love mysteries, and I read them every night before I go to bed.
Literary fiction, as a strict genre, is all but dead. Meanwhile, most genres flourish.
I don't read a great deal of fiction, to my shame, other than the classics.