Books Mark as Read The Thing You Want to Read Is Out There (Probably) On reading—and looking—outside your comfort zone By Molly Templeton | Published on July 17, 2025 Photo: Jaredd Craig [via Unsplash] Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Jaredd Craig [via Unsplash] The other day I was complaining about books. This was foolish for a whole host of reasons that I will get into shortly. But I was looking at a lot of upcoming releases, looking at the rest of the year in books, and I felt—for a grumpy and absurd moment—like everything was romantasy or horror. And I whined about it. I know better. At this point, when it comes to books, there’s everything (with certain caveats). You just have to go find it. I am old enough that I have lived through several rounds of my peers complaining that there’s no good music “anymore.” In an earlier era, when I heard this complaint, I ran the music section for an alt-weekly, and knew perfectly well that there was plenty of good music. It just wasn’t the music my peers were automatically hearing about without having to seek it out. (Please note, of course, that everyone has a subjective and wildly different idea of “good.”) Later, when I was older and no longer anywhere near an alt-weekly, I would sometimes catch myself falling prey to this same assumption. I can still fall into this trap, even now; it will feel like I can’t find what I want, and so I assume, briefly and incorrectly, that what I want isn’t out there. It is (almost) always out there. Somewhere. If you are a romantasy or horror reader, you are undoubtedly—and very visibly—living in a vibrant age for your beloved genre(s). It seems like every time I go to Powell’s there’s a new subgenre on display on the endcaps near the SFF section (one was something like “cozy plant horror” and yes, there were enough books to fill a whole endcap, and yes, Eat the Ones You Love was one of them). I am too much of a baby for (most) horror, yet I get repeatedly tempted by books that I would probably throw across the room in a fright. I love romance readers, but that’s not my happy reading space. I’m delighted for all of them, genuinely and enthusiastically; I remember the not-so-long-ago days when “romance” was a dirty word in a lot of bookstores. I hope that everyone who loves these genres is enjoying every moment of their ascendancy and/or dominance. But if, like me, these are not your genres, you may feel a little sulky from time to time, and that’s okay. Everything comes in cycles, to some degree. Things cycle out (YA dystopia), things cycle back (hi again, YA dystopia!). The thing is, other books are still out there. They’re just not quite as easy to find, not as prominently placed in the bookstore, or as regularly popping up in our social feeds. This is not a needle-in-a-haystack problem of scarcity. It’s more like a piece of hay in a haystack problem, because there are just so many books. Traditionally published books, self-published books, small-press books, books that don’t quite fit into any of those categories; cross-genre books, nonfiction books, online articles the length of books—at any given moment there are at least six books that I want to read this second demanding my attention.  And let’s be real. I said six because it sounded reasonable. It’s more like sixteen. Sixty? I don’t know. It’s a lot.  (While I was thinking about this odd problem-that-feels-like-it-shouldn’t-be-a-problem, I saw author Kameron Hurley mention the tyranny of choice on social media—the concept that too many choices don’t actually make people happier. Hurley linked a Scientific American article on the subject; it’s from 2004, but the opening could have been written yesterday. It feels silly to say “There are so many books that I don’t know what to read,” but it tracks.) To some degree, what I want to say here is that if you’re feeling like you can’t find the books you want to read, they’re out there. Somewhere. Saying this is not, I hasten to add, to let traditional publishing off the hook for all its weaknesses when it comes to whose voices get published and promoted. Other outlets, including self-publishing, fill some of the holes, but not all. Publishing could still do better on so many fronts, from living wages to real commitments to diversity and equity. And that’s just for starters. But I am also trying to remind myself that when I think I can’t find what I want, one of two things is probably happening. One, I’m not looking hard enough, or in the right places. (This is where I stop myself from writing a whole sidebar about the bookish media landscape, its continued shrinking, the difficulty of finding reliable opinions about and discussion of books in anything resembling large media, and the way social media lets us all share opinions but doesn’t really encourage in-depth discussion. But I digress. A lot.) And two—well, two is harder. Two is that when I’m feeling sulky and shut out of a cultural space of conversation, it is probably a me problem. I am probably being way too much of a snail, pulled into my shell, tucked into my little comfort zone, and not looking out farther and wider for what interests me. I don’t just want science fiction about how we can make better worlds and fantasy about grown-ass humans having next-level grown-up coming-of-age experiences (though those are two of my favorite things). I want nonfiction about books and reading and culture from all different perspectives. I want weird genre-blending books and creative nonfiction works and books about how writers read. I want SFF in translation and mysteries starring plucky 12-year-olds and everything Mary Ruefle and Samuel R. Delany have ever written (to name just two from a very long list). I want work from writers who play with form and expectation, no matter what genre they’re writing in. When you run into that feeling like you can’t get what you want, you might ask yourself: Is there more out there to want? I started thinking about this topic because I was annoyed by another New York Times column that invented a problem and then complained about how things used to be without taking into account all the things we know were different in those days. It was one of those columns that treats a certain kind of fiction as if it’s the only kind of fiction that matters. At this moment in time, it is absurd to say that modern books lack “confidence and audacity.”  I resent those clickbait NYT columns for eating up time and space in my brain. So I started to think about abundance, and about the feels-fake-but-is-real issue of not being able to choose, because there’s too much to choose from. I thought about how easy it is to only know about what you already know about, without asking or looking for what else is out there. When I was a kid, the books available to me were those on my mom’s SFF shelves, those at the small-town public library, and those at the Waldenbooks in the mall. With all the free time of a 13-year-old in the summer, I could not have finished all those books.  And those books were, in hindsight, a very small selection from a very specific kind of writer. They were almost all white; they were not all male, because my mom read a lot of women SFF writers and I followed in her footsteps. But still: a specific pool.  Now, I can order books from writers around the globe. There is still not enough work being translated into English, but there’s some. There’s still not enough work from writers from other countries being published in this country, but there’s some. The boundaries stretch, the pool deepens. I don’t want to be a cranky old NYT writer who only sees what he’s looking for. I want to look further and wider. And to do that, I have to get out of that snail shell. The shell is comfortable, cozy; the shell feels protective. If I’m in there, with all the things I know and am familiar with, I can curl up with six more big fat books and pull the mental curtains for a while.  But the truth is, if I’m being a snail about books, I’m probably being a snail about everything. I’m forgetting to look out and beyond, to find the things that matter and speak to me in all places—the people doing the work to make this world better, to stop the monsters in their tracks; the people making beauty and art of all kinds; the places where progress is possible; the places to put anger, and to use it as fuel.  Being a reader isn’t just picking up whatever’s set in front of you. And being a person who’s engaged with the world isn’t just accepting what’s set in front of you, either. For me, there’s a connection between getting too comfortable in how I’m engaged with books and with art, and getting too complacent in how I’m moving through the world. For other readers, it’s the opposite: reading is a comfort, a balm, a retreat from all the other things. There’s no one right way to do anything, but if you are feeling set in your ways, or like you’re missing things, or like it’s hard to come out of a shell—it might help to look a little farther than you have been. [end-mark] The post The Thing You Want to Read Is Out There (Probably) appeared first on Reactor.