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TIL that 'literary fiction' label almost made me skip a book I ended up loving

I was at a used book sale in Portland last month and passed on a novel because I thought it would be too pretentious. My friend grabbed it for me anyway, and it turned out to be this gripping story about a family running a diner in a small town. The writing was actually super accessible, just had deeper themes. Has anyone else been tricked by the way a book is categorized?
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drew690
drew6907d agoMost Upvoted
People act like literary fiction is some kind of poison or something. It's just a category, not a warning label. I've read plenty of books labeled that way that were just regular stories with good writing. Same with genre fiction, lots of it is just as deep as anything else. Seems weird to get worked up over a sticker on a book. The whole thing sounds like a minor problem with a pretty easy fix.
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sagep19
sagep196d ago
32 libraries near me dumped literary labels last year and saw a 40% rise in circulation, @drew690.
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