Follow Friday #18 / Book Blogger Hop #18 / Literary Blog Hop #2

It's that time of week again. Here is the question from the Book Blogger Hop, hosted by Crazy-for-Books.

What’s the ONE GENRE that you wish you could get into, but just can’t?

Hmm. There are plenty I can't get into but wouldn't want to i.e. chick lit, but I read at least a little in most other catagories. I guess travel writing (e.g. Bill Bryson) is something I'd like to try more in the future...and some YA. I hear great things about some YA books and a few I read and do enjoy, but some I find a bit juvenile and it puts me off trying others for a while.

Q. Name 3 authors that you would love to sit down and spend an hour or a meal with just talking about either their books or get advice on writing from?

Does it have to be living authors? I would say definitely Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, to discuss how she goes about researching the historic settings for her books as they are always so full of great detail. Then dead authors I'd love to meet if I had a time machine, or could summon up their ghosts, would be Tolkien and Victor Hugo.
If I can only pick living authors, I select Yann Martel and Charlaine Harris as my other too. How's that?

Discuss Bibliotherapy. Do you believe literature can be a viable form of therapy? Is literary writing more or less therapeutic than pop lit or nonficition?

I think literature can definitely be therapeutic. I can't count the number of times I've picked up a book feeling miserable then found my mood much improved once I've been lost in a good story for an hour or so. I think literary fiction probably is more therapeutic than popular fiction and nonfiction, for me at least, as literary fiction tends to address the deeper issues, raising more thought-provoking points. I tend to become much more emotionally involved in good literary fiction and that is what I would find therapeutic - discovering a deep emotion within a text that either mirrors my own feelings, confirming and vindicating them, or allowing the opposing emotion in a book to counteract what I am feeling, giving me something else to focus on.