Genre Fiction Made Simple

What kinds of novels do you like to read? If words like 'mystery,' 'horror,' or 'romance' come to mind, then you’re already familiar with genre fiction—even if you didn’t know it had a name.

What is Genre Fiction?

Genre fiction is the kind of storytelling that follows certain patterns, like familiar characters, storylines, or settings, that help us know what kind of book we’re reading.

Writers use these patterns as building blocks to create exciting and satisfying stories. The patterns—also called tropes or formulas—show up in novels we can then conveniently classify as thriller, romance, mystery, historical, sci-fi (science fiction), to name a few examples.

The idea of “genre fiction” didn’t really exist until the 1900s. That’s when publishers started using it as a way to group books and help readers find what they like.

Since then, imaginative and innovative storytellers have expanded and evolved the world of genre fiction to include sub-genres (and even sub-sub-genres), like romantic comedy (rom-com), cozy mystery, and domestic thriller.

Find Popular Genres Fast

Here at Burlington Public Library, we’ve made it easy for fans of romance, mystery, sci-fi/fantasy, and Western genre fiction to find stories that match their reading taste by shelving these four popular genres separately within our fiction collection. The books in these genre-specific collections also have a unique label on the spine, so you can easily spot them on the shelves.

Browsing at home? No problem! You can also search the online catalogue by genre. It’s easy! In the catalogue, select search by “Subject” and type in romance fiction or mystery fiction, for example, and you will find a plethora of results.

You can also do this for genres that are not shelved separately at our branches, such as horror fiction.

More Search Options

Say you’re looking for a title by an author who writes in multiple genres, like Nora Roberts, for instance, but you only like their romance fiction. In this case, we recommend searching the catalogue by “Author” and then using the “Filter your results by...” Form/Genre option in the side menu.

Maybe you want to read a book about witches, but would like it to be more historical fiction than horror... the same applies. Stick with us, and your To-Be-Read list will be on fire!

A Peek Behind the Scenes

(Alert! We get a bit library-techy here.) You may be wondering how we select our genre fiction books or how we classify them.

BPL works with vendors by providing them with ARPs (Advanced Resource Plan). This helps us to get new and current items without having to hand-pick every title. Librarians set our preferences, such as genre, subject, and reading level. And then, based on this information, experts working for our vendors select and supply the titles for our collection.

Each title comes with a MARC record (Machine-Readable Cataloging). The MARC record provides detailed information about each item (title, genre, author, price, description, ISBN, etc.) in a computer-readable format for the library’s computer system. This allows libraries worldwide to catalogue, search, and share this information.

Since the MARC record identifies the genre, we can make sure every item is shelved in the right location and properly catalogued so you can find them!