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Q&A Is there an alternative to the common genre-system for classifying books?

Unfortunately I think what you're looking for is too subjective to be of mass applicability. You suggest that books could be classified according to the "underlying purpose, moral, or message." T...

posted 11y ago by Lauren Ipsum‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-13T12:00:17Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/8372
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T02:58:35Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/8372
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T02:58:35Z (almost 5 years ago)
Unfortunately I think what you're looking for is too subjective to be of mass applicability.

You suggest that books could be classified according to the "underlying purpose, moral, or message." That's ridiculously vague and wide open to interpretation.

Every reader is going to have a different sense of what a novel's moral or message might be. The author has one moral in mind, and most of the readers will see another. A message which was clear and unambiguously positive in 1850 will be anything from quaint to abhorrent in 2013. A book with an evangelical Christian message will be uplifting to one audience and revolting to another. Someone from Texas will read it differently than someone from Turkey. If any given person reads a book at age 14, that same exact person isn't necessarily going to see the book the same way at 34. And so on.

You might try looking up specialized reviewers or bloggers depending on what your own niche is (feminist leanings, Christianity, no animals were harmed), but trying to classify books according to what they _mean_ is something best left to a Philosophy class.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2013-07-10T10:38:31Z (over 11 years ago)
Original score: 2