Number 3016!

Getting tantalizingly close to the 2000's, folks. I've decided to add all my "neighbors" on my way up to my list of interesting people. Tonight's neighbors are a young black lady who reviews mostly black, Christian women's fiction -- and a fellow who mostly reviews tech stuff. I'm trying to decide what I think about the whole phenomenon of "niche publishing" and "niche authors". My initial sense is that I'm against it.

What I mean is, just because you're a Hispanic, lesbian woman does that mean that the only fiction that would ever be interesting to you is romances about Hispanic lesbians? I've noticed that there are actually fiction writers who specialize in niches as obscure as "Asian women's christian fiction". Are there actually that many dedicated readers of something that specific? Obviously there must be or no one could ever get published writing for this particular niche. But I kind of thought that to some degree we read to broaden our minds, and I'm not sure how broad your horizons would get if you only read about people exacctly like you.

Now here I'm not slamming the christian women's fiction trend, or even the christian teen women's fiction trend -- because personally I can see where you might want to read a nice romance (or you might want your daughter to) which doesn't involve people inventing new sexual positions or techniques and skills. But sometimes I think it's also good to read about eskimos, or global warming or something that might be directly outside your own personal experience.