Our book club chose to read only debut novels this year to support new voices, but we keep finding ourselves comparing everything to established classics and dismissing experimental choices as 'trying too hard.' We wanted to expand our sense of what novels could be, but we're judging new possibilities by old standards.
More people experience this than they realize.
Reading communities often unconsciously reinforce conventional literary hierarchies even when they explicitly want to discover new possibilities.
“Where Are You with The novel — form and possibility?”
If this sounds familiar, the Library can help you find the bigger picture.