I
confess to getting a kick out of watching The Westminster Dog Show, even though
I feel a bit guilty. Why would I feel
guilty watching a dog beauty contest? I
think it’s because I feel the animals are being used and manipulated in an
unnatural setting. Dogs should compete
at their own levels, not under a human standard of dogness.
The way
they “show” the dogs seems foreign to how dogs really interact. We love that dogs run, bark, roll over for
belly rubs, try to lick us, love to sit on our laps and be by our side. None of these features are included in the
judged event. Instead, it’s a
competition run by a bunch of stuffy snotnoses who believe they are qualified
to be in a superior position to rate dogs on a subjective scale. We should embrace a dog's natural imperfections and not penalize them for being unmanicured. Their sloppiness and and doofiness is what we should hug.
This
year the competition featured 196 dog breeds, which is weird because not even
20 years ago there were maybe 145 breeds.
The evolution of dogs is out of control.
Breeders are genetically altering our dogs and mixing breeds and certain
physical traits that are not natural.
This has me wondering: Are we creating more genres of books the way
society is breeding new dogs? Is our
genre explosion good for us?
It’s not
enough to say you write science fiction books.
Are they post-apocalyptic adventures?
Are they futuristic stories? Are
they time-travel books? Are they human
vs. robot books? It seems that every
genre has its subgenre themes and categories.
If enough people tend to write on a type of topic, a genre has been
created.
Mommy
porn.
Lesbian
vampire erotica.
Terrorism
fantasy.
These
are just some of the scores of mini-genres floating around now. What makes a genre a genre? Can a mini-genre belong to multiple
genres? Does everything really need to
be labeled and catalogued to such a degree that the books in a genre get
trivialized?
Drama,
mystery, comedy, etc. just don’t cut it anymore. We need to further classify a book to the
point likeminded ones are clustered to form a new genre. It would be akin to the supermarket not just
having a candy aisle, but multiple sections for candy, each with it’s own
distinct theme: gum, sucking candies, milk chocolates, chocolate with nuts or
flavors, etc.
In the
end, the best dog is singled out, and the same comes with books. Despite a flurry of new genres, only a handful
of books will be deemed “the best in show.”
DON’T MISS: ALL NEW RESOURCE OF THE YEAR
2015 Book PR & Marketing Toolkit: All New
Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and
ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter
@theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more
important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by
BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2015
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