I read the article, and I can't recall a reviewer more determined to dislike what he read.

Have I introduced you to the faceless genre nazi at Publishers Weekly, who reviewed "Weaver"?

BTW, I'm totally in agreement about living up to noir. Dudes, there are some big, big, BIG shoes to fill, in that particular field...

But who's doing the ranking? That's what I don't understand.

Well, I know in college, it was pretty common for someone to judge a body and find said body wanting if said body read, oh, romance or fantasy, where reading mystery was seen as intellectually acceptable.

I know a number of people who pretty much only read "literary" fiction and do give me a look of disdain when I admit to mainly reading mysteries, science fiction and nonfiction. I'm just not much on most modern literary fiction. I want something to actually happen. The New Yorker once ran a cartoon that was making fun of a lot of the stuff the New Yorker buys. A man is making a peanut butter sandwich and the caption says something like, "He smoothed the thick peanut butter across the bread, watching the slow swirls cover the rough texture of the bread. It reminded hiim of the peanut butter sandwiches his mother had made long ago, back in the house on the sunlit hill...." For me, at about that point, I would want something to explode.

I am reading a Dana Stabenow mystery for the first time. I'm liking her.

YAY! Kate Shugak or a Liam Campbell?

Oh, and when I say "old," I mean 1956.

OUCH!

Wrod. Or porn to happen.

On the SF/romance/fantasy/whatever spectrum, I've had the experience of going into the SF/fantasy section at the bookstore and flushing out nervous guys...it's very much like walking into an adult store. Doesn't happen in "normal" fiction or mysteries. I've also had guests (mostly not-friend guests) look at my bookshelves and do the little Grimace of Judgement at anything that isn't a Very Important Book. I've had people ask what I'm reading, and if the answer's something with the word "dragon" in the title, respond, "oh." I don't personally care - I'll read anything I damn well please in public - but I've noted it, and I do think it's sad that Tom Clancy is more socially acceptable than Robert Heinlein.

Horror breaks down differently, I think. If you are reading Lovecraft, intellectuals will think "One of us!" and gamers will think "One of us!" and mundanes won't know enough to judge. Some horror, like House of Leaves" is even generally hip. King, Koontz, Straub, and Barker are always acceptable, but if you get too far off that path, ware the stigmatizing.

OUCH!

I don't know the market -- when was the peak of of the procedural genre?

Suela, the discussion you're thinking of was on lj. There was much snarking at the article for its ignorance and major logical flaws.

It is my impression that respected literary reviews, i.e., The New York Times Book Review and the New York Review of Books, rank genres in the following fashion:

literary fiction
mysteries
science fiction
fantasy
romance
children's books

This is an entirely unscientific statement based on nothing more than my perception. Feel free to dispute based on opinion or, shockingly, actual fact.

There's also a huge tendency among literary reviewers to describe anything in one of the lower genres that they like as "transcending genre," which is why I can no longer see that phrase without snarling.

It reminds me of Kingsley Amis' "'Sf's no good,' they bellow till we're deaf. 'But this looks good.' 'Well then, it's not sf.'"

Oddly, my judgemental self would rate kids books higher. Probably a product of being an elem school teacher's child. All books are a badge of honor, and good kids books rank way up there. Hell, last xmas I got 2 and gave 2, to adults.

Off conversation, Jenny Boylan was on 48 Hours or somesuch. She wrote She's Not There about her experience being transgendered, and her decisions. Book was interesting and well written and I do recommend it. I felt she came off a little self centered, and not because of the decisions she made in her life. Just..generically self centered. It may also be the nature of the book itself, as it is about him becoming her, from the inside perspective, not the outside. Which I suppose is appropriate, but was to the detriment of my connecting with the book.

See, I find most Litfic stultifyingly boring.

Notably, I assayed "Atonement" on the strength of it's glowing reviews and thought "This is what passes for Literature these days?"

The pace was soooooooo slow and the subterranean volcanoes of angst so neatly bordered that I was just ready to gouge my eyes out. I soldiered it out though, and it picked up later but SHEESH!