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!

One of the most gripping Josephine Teys (not telling which)

Betsy, could you white-font the title. I'm curious - there's one book of hers I've always heard is one of the best - period. Whitefonted: Daughter of Time I think.

Java, It was a Kate book. I finished and liked it and will seek out more.

Ken, the title is

Miss Pym Disposes

Micole and Ken both have very very very good taste in Tey. Ken's choice is generally considered one of the five best mysteries ever (I came to that conclusion on my own, but Murder, Ink and Murderess, Ink both agree), along with Allingham's tale of a completely amoral man, The Tiger in the Smoke.

Micole, I think, oddly enough, that the lowest item on your list - children's lit - is actually held in fairly high esteem, at least by the reviewers I know. And thinking about it? There are a lot of modern books for both young children and young adults that rank as classics - possibly more than in any of the other genres.

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.

Plei, back in my high school - hang out with college students days (end of sixties), the reverse was true. If you weren't holding and ready to discuss to the point of tears of boredom one of the following, you had no cred:

1. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
2. Anything by Tolkein
3. Anything by Gibran
4. Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf

The only points I got off that little lot was a half-point for Hesse's Siddartha. But you'll notice, not a mystery in the bunch. Scifi, fantasy, lots of literary metaphor.

The times, they have a-changed.

In Israel, until very recent years, SF got the worst translations, the least promotion, and only if you really knew what you wanted, you could find it hiding at bottom shelves in bookstores. There was always a group of 'hard core' fans, in the lack of a better description, that were familiar with the publications in other languages and somehow managed to get books from abroad (which was not that easy before the Amazon era), so the real serious places to look for good SF books were the second-hand bookstores, and only if your English was fluent enough.

Recently, things improved immensely, mainly because - in my opinion - publishers realized that the audience is very dedicated and willing to pay for quality. So lately there are good (and even excellent) translations, and some critics even write about SF books, even without the need to explain the genres in three full paragraphs before ever getting to the book itself.

With fantasy (or at least what I think is fantasy - I'm not sure I'm really clear on what this term describes), things were a little slower. Tolkien was translated around 30 years ago, and the translation was re-done recently (before the films, not connected to them, as far as I know), but not much more. Whatever books were translated, they were more often than not categorized as children's books. And here, at least until "Harry Potter", children's books that had an element of not-in-real-life in them, in any sort of way, were looked upon as definitely inferior. Again, recently, and because publishers found out it can sell, there are more fantasy books being translated, but what was described above about the embarrassing covers is true here, too.

Mystery, however, gets much better attitude here. It is still being classified under the genre 'umbrella', so to speak, but it's not considered a genre that is embarrassing to read or to write. I think what best reflects this is the existence of Israeli writers who write mystery novels (some even very good ones, IMHO, and my O is very H because I haven't read way too many of the names you've all mentioned, so my ignorance in the field is vast). Some are respected mainstream writers who also write mysteries. Nobody here writes SF, let alone fantasy. Well, not exactly, there is a beginning of a process that may end up as a real line of original Israeli creation in these genres (mainly starting developing on the internet, BTW) but it's still a wee baby hope thing, and from the couple of the last years only, so I don't have nearly enough perspective to say whether it's a sign for things to come or a sudden fluctuation alone.

The funny thing about the Israeli books market is that until around 10 years ago, most of the best-sellers were what is considered 'high literature' (this is an Hebrew expression, word for word, I don't know how to really-translate it into English). Only recently thrillers and romances and 'airport' books (is that how they're called?) managed to get respectably published, let alone dominate these lists.