Feature and Follow

I'm going to stumble my way through my first Blog hop.  I will be stepping on toes, I guarantee.  I think I'm supposed to answer the question below and then go make friends on blogs on the Hop list.  If you find this and see some major wrongness with it, please give me some tips. 

Q: Jumping Genres: Ever pick up a book from a genre you usually don’t like and LOVE it? Tell us about it and why you picked it up in the first place.

I read Water For Elephants after my wife recommended it, having read it for a book club.  I was knee-deep in YA titles at the time, as that's what I write, and I really fell for this story set in the Great Depression about circus folk and a big, gray, pachyderm.  The back and forth between present day and the past was handled well, and the ending of the story was actually revealed in the first few pages, though done in a clever way that left me going back and reading that opening scene again with new eyes. 

I think it's great to get out of our genre of choice.  It's like putting on a different pair of shoes.  You can't play soccer in high heels, and you can't dance the tango in cleats.

Water for Elephants is a great example of me putting on cleats.  Wait, that would mean I'm usually in heels.  Whatever.  A great read that opened me up to other books in the process.