WEEK 6

Assignment 1

Exploring the genre link for Urban Fiction called Street Fiction has been eye opening.  The site has history-listing the first novel of this type as Moll Flanders dating back to 1722!  There are links for author interviews and librarian resources.  You can search by category and find books that use graffiti, suicide or LGBT elements in the storyline-just to name a few.  It is broken up into broader categories of street fiction, urban non-fiction, urban Christian fiction and Urban teen fiction with links to about 338 authors.  The Street Fiction website is bound to become a great tool in our RA services at Randallstown.

Assignment 2  

Prezi introduced me to the Urban fiction subgenres of Hip-Hop,
Erotica and Christian.  I also found some surprises in the Mystery subgenres such as Pet Investigators and Hardboiled. The Superhuman category in Fantasy was another that I was previously unaware of.

 

Assignment 3

I started looking for a pet detective fansite- but gave up
and resorted to a website that specializes in cat mysteries.
http://faculty.law.lsu.edu/ccorcos/lawhum/catmysterywebpages.htm#BOOKS FEATURING CAT DETECTIVES
There is an extensive listing of authors  and the site subdivides into cats that solve mysteries and mysteries with cat characters (not necessarily involved in the solution of the mystery). 

 

fanfiction.net is a site that lists fanfiction by book titles.
I didn’t see any that looked like Urban Fiction so I picked
a series I was unfamiliar with called Young Samurai.  It seemed that most fans wanted to change the ending of a particular book- generally to change it from sad to happy. 

 
I found an interesting viewpoint on genre from an author BCPL catalogs as SciFi/Fantasy :

 ___________
*Charles de Lint on what to call his fiction:
“We liked the term ‘mythic fiction,’ which fits perfectly. ‘Urban fantasy’
doesn’t work because a lot of what I do isn’t set in an urban setting…’Mythic
fiction’ works because it has broader resonances and alludes to the heart of
this fiction, which is, of course, myth. It has the right tonality because these
are stories that have modern sensibilities, dealing with contemporary people and
issues, but they utilize the material of folklore, fairy tale, and myth to help
illuminate that. It also omits the word ‘fantasy’–a term for which people have
too many preconceptions….[because] I’m trying to engage an even broader
audience — people who normally don’t read fantasy, who get scared by the word
fantasy or by those types of covers. I think a lot of people who don’t like
fantasy just haven’t had the chance to have the right book put in front of
them.”–Charles de Lint (Locus, June 2003)

 

I have not really fulfilled all components of this assignment.  I’ve been frustrated with Prezi- I just tried to look at it again and it has not finished loading.  I also do not like the constant need to zoom in and out.  I’m going to put the rest of the assignment on hold for now so I can move on!