Discussion: Genre Binge

So, I have a problem.  When I like something, I’ll go completely overboard and love it to death.  If I like a song, I’ll play it on repeat until I cannot stand to listen any longer (1997 was a tough year – to this day I cannot listen to ‘My Heart Will Go On’ because Little Justine just loved it so much).  It turns out, I do the same thing with books.

For a period of time, I exclusively read adult fantasy novels.  I wouldn’t touch YA, I would really struggle to read any other genre of book.  It all started with Eye of the World by Robert Jordan, which I rescued from a box of books we were going to donate to the library.  That book kickstarted a fantasy book binge that ended in 2016.  I’m now struggling to read the same books I was obsessed with only a few years ago because I’m just so burnt out on the genre.  I can’t even finish Wheel of Time, the series that started it all, in part because of this.

I’ve been trying to be more careful about this now. I mix up what I read with fantasy, science fiction, literary fiction, non-fiction, and historical fiction.  It can be so tempting to dive back into a genre binge though.  I’m reading lots of YA these days, a genre I only truly discovered earlier this year with Alwyn Hamilton’s Rebel of the Sands, but I’m trying to read other things as well.

So here’s my question to you: are you a genre binger?  Do you exclusively read one type of book or do you try to read many different things?  How do you mix up what you read?  Are you a ‘binge it until you cannot stand it for at least three years’ kind of reader like me?  Let me know!