Changing Tastes

Damn them! Damn them to hell. My Sunday morning treat to myself is a McDonald's Breakfast. This morning I decided to give myself a double treat and stop at Chapters on the way. I hadn't been there for a while - relatively speaking of course. And wasn't this just the last day of their 'buy 3, get 1 free' promotion. I could have done without knowing that as I was only planning on getting one book this trip -

Linnea Sinclair's Rebels and Lovers.

And maybe another one - new author





Addison Fox's Warrior Ascended.
I think her name is cool and it's the first of a new paranormal series about zodiac type heroes and the first one is a Leo - and I'm a Leo - so I had to get it.....right?

Anyway with their buy 3 get 1 free promotion, it would be silly not to get one more to get the fourth free - so I'm now the proud owner of


Christy Reece's No Chance


and




Stephanie Tyler's Hard to Hold.






Now you may be wondering what the above has to do with the title of this post. Well, (you know you're in trouble when I start something with 'well') it occurred to my that none of the books I picked up today were historicals. In fact, none of the books I picked up to look at in the store were European Historicals. None of the books in my last book buying binge (seen on the right) were European Historicals. In fact, when I looked at one of the graphs (done by the Excel Queen Rosario) for the type of books read, I've only read one historical so far this year - Ravishing in Red.
When I first started reading romance again - lo these many years ago now, European Historicals were all that I read for a few years before branching out into other genres.

But now, here in 2010, the trend seems to be 1) Contemporaries, 2) Westerns and 3) Romantic Suspense with the others following behind. In looking at the graph, European Historicals had their real heyday with me back in 2005.


But in looking at another graph, 2005 was my biggest year in reading since I started keeping stats of the number of books read. At the pace I'm at now though, I'm blowing 2005 out of the water as far as books read. So far - even before the end of March I'm up to 34 and at this rate, I'll have read 132 by the end of 2010. Of course that doesn't take into account slumps - one never knows when one of those will take over.

At the rate and genre I'm reading though, European Historicals will be way down the list this year.

In trying to figure out why they are so low on my reading pole as compared to previous years, I've come up with a number of reasons why this is so.

Age vs Innocence
Now that I'm older than I was five years ago, I think I have less in common with many of the heroines of Historicals. I don't know the average age, but I'd say it's probably somewhere between 18 and 22. I just can't relate to heroines that young anymore. The heroines in other genres tend to be a little older and more savy than the young innocent virgin miss in Historicals. Even in Westerns, the heroines are more 'on the ball' so to speak.

Overabundance of Titles
I can't tell you how tired I am of dukes, earls, viscounts and marquis!!! If there is one of those titles in the books title, I'm not even interested in picking it up to see what it's about. I would be more interested in giving it a read if the heroes were to be untitled. That's why Lisa Kleypas is still on my list. It's not that I won't read them - I still have a number in the TBR pile. But they aren't at the top of the pile, more in the middle they are.

Wanting to Mix it Up
One of my reading goals this year is to shake up the genres; reading a more varied lot. So far the genre I've been most impressed with is Urban Fantasy. Of course so far it's only been one author, Joss Ware, that I've read from this genre, but her books are fantastic!!

English Overload
After a steady diet of mainly English set historicals for the past 15 years or so, I think I've finally just about hit my limit on this setting, be it Victorian, Regency or whatever. If more were to come out with different settings, such as Canada, US, India, Russia or whatever, I think I could be persuaded back to the fold, but I've had it with historical books set in England. Even back then the world was a big place and romance flourished everywhere.

Whatever the reason, the interest just isn't there the way it used to be and that makes me kind of sad as it was my favourite genre for so many years. But on the plus side, I am discovering great books in other genres.

What about anyone else? Have you tired or peaked out at one particular genre and have you figured out why?