I think what we might argue are mysteries and what people might think of if someone asks "Do you read/like mysteries? are two very different things.

My minor is in English, mostly so I could take creative writing. But even then I kind of kept my crime fiction habit on the down-low because it was "genre" and most of my teachers said that like I would say "gonorrhea". We were supposed to be mining our experiences and whatnot.I didn't read a mystery for quite a few years. Then I went through another phase where I read almost all women.(Found Sara Paretsky during that...I'm still a big fan) But really it wasn't till I read George Pelecanos' "Hard Revolution" that I realized that you can have a great mystery that makes a real point without "transcending" anything. George writes crime stories. About gentrification. And yet, they're still almost brutally cool. And I always think the "only turn the TV on in leap year" people have a secret video "vice"...like having seen every episode of "Family Matters" or something. There is something they don't want their brainiac friends to know that they watch. But then again, I'm a crime writer. I'm suspicious.

That seems right to me, Megan. I mean, I've read a few books by the Wire guys (Price, Pelecanos, Lehane, and one by Laura Lippman), and I've read most of Chandler's and Hammett's books, but I don't know if it would be right to call myself a reader of mysteries. Unless we're using the idea of mystery in a larger, more existential sense.

I took several literature courses in college, including two semesters of Shakespeare (one for histories and comedies, one for tragedies). Comes in handy when I watch the movie versions of his plays.

But I enjoy a fairly wide swath of fiction. I finished my latest commute-to-work book this morning (Anthony Trollope, Castle Richmond) and may finish my latest lunchtime book this weekend (Stephen King, It).

I didn't know that Lehane wrote for The Wire. Why aren't they mysteries? Aren't police procedurals a type of mystery?

I read Erika Jahneke.

Her comment (xpost with mine, natch) about crime fiction made me think I should clarify: there's crime and mystery at the heart of a lot of novels that I love. It might just be my lack of knowledge about the genre, but when a book gets the mystery genre tag, I tend to think that it means that it is a procedural drama. And I'm sure there's a bunch of those I would like a lot, but I also know there's a bunch that I wouldn't like, and I'm not really all that sure about how to navigate them. Also I don't have much time for reading these days, and I have a huge backlog in my books-to-read pile, so I'm not really interested in diving in, either.

So you see a large area called "crime fiction" within which falls a subset which are mysteries?

I think they are. And Joseph Wambaugh served as Mystery Writers of America president so they think they are, too. I think Price and Lehane have literary cachet now, so they don't have to claim it if they don't want, but "Samaritan" is a mystery.

I am glad that I did not go to my first choice college ( yours, David) .

I didn't know that, beth!

Even within an English degree its easy enough to chart a tight course and land where you prefer. I was able to build most of my classes around poetry instead of novels and meet all my requirements: Victorian poetry, Renaissance poetry, Shakespeare, etc. Though at Kenyon it was common enough to read literature for your other courses, like Antigone (rights of the individual vs. rights of the state) or Heart of Darkness (Colonialism) for Political Science.

Hard-boiled fiction is classed with mysteries though it's a different tradition. The early hard-boileds did usually have a mystery in them (like The Maltese Falcon) though later they became basically Crime Fiction, exploring the milieu and encompassing both police procedurals and heists and all the other sub-genres.

Kind of weird that Daughter of Time is shelved with Red Harvest but then science fiction and fantasy are conflated in odd ways. I mean, Bradbury's way more of a fantasist than a science fiction writer. What does I, Robot have in common with The Last Unicorn anyway? And yet they're filed in the same section.

Stop it...I only got the one crime story. Super-innocent-looking geek woman(mobility aid optional) goes outside the law and gets by with it. But I guess Lippman has a nice life and she writes that, too. Sometimes.