This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is about books you’ve read (or want to read) that are outside your comfort zone. I read so widely/apparently randomly that it’s kinda hard to define what my comfort zone looks like, especially since each book holds the potential to expand it, but let’s see what I can come up with!

1. Feed, by Mira Grant. Granted, I adore this one now, but I didn’t always. When I first read it, it made me feel reaaaally on edge and uncomfortable, because horror isn’t my thing and the idea of everyone being infected with a cocktail of viruses that could turn them into zombies at any time was… yeah, definitely dancing around on my anxieties.
2. Eat Me: A Natural and Unnatural History of Cannibalism, by Bill Schutt. I just finished this one, but I think it counts; it’s not really a topic I’m interested in per se, definitely not for prurient interest, but I decided to give it a go because it wasn’t a subject I’m very familiar with, and new knowledge is always of interest to me. I need to write up my review of this one, because I just finished it last night!
3. Shades of Milk and Honey, by Mary Robinette Kowal. By heavy contrast to the previous two, ahaha, this is a Regency-ish Austenesque fantasy. It is actually pretty squarely in my comfort zone now, but when I read it I tended to be allergic to anything that smacked of Jane Austen, wasn’t a romance fan, and in general wasn’t best positioned to enjoy it. I didn’t rate it very highly the first time, but I revisited and enjoyed it more, and particularly started enjoying Glamour in Glass, the second book.
4. The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu. This was my first danmei, and I really wasn’t sure whether I was going to like it. I remember reading it in a hotel room in Bath during a long weekend getaway with my wife, and just constantly making WTF noises at it — all I’d really understood going into the story was that the two main characters were canonically terrible at sex, and that some people really really loved the books. I don’t know why I picked them over Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation or Heaven Official’s Blessing, which might’ve been less weird introductions to danmei… but hey, it ultimately worked. I finished the first book and decided that I did really need to know where it went. That said, the series still kinda sits on the edge of my comfort zone for a couple of reasons: the student/teacher relationship (which I feel is carefully managed and balanced in context, but is still on edge of what I’m okay with) and the fact that it’s a satire of a genre I don’t really know (the cultivation novel).
5. What Moves The Dead, by T. Kingfisher. I am a wimp about horror. I’ve read a surprising amount of it for someone who isn’t a horror fan, one way or another, but it’s still not my comfy genre. What Moves The Dead was pretty brilliant, but it also freaked me out, dancing around the edge of my anxieties about contamination and disease.
6. Spillover, by David Quammen. I hardly need to write an explanation of this anymore for regulars here, who won’t be surprised to see it in the list! Back when I read Spillover, I was deliberately forcing myself to be curious about something that terrified me: infectious disease. A popular science book seemed like a reasonably controlled way to do it. It wasn’t comfy reading for me, though it helped that spillover events don’t generally happen in UK back gardens, and that Quammen is very measured and careful in assessing risks. Now, of course, I have an MSc in infectious diseases (or I will once my graduation ceremony is held); Quammen really started something for me. It was also part of my initial attempts to read more non-fiction (which now constitutes about 30% of what I read), so, yeah, a great success all round.
7. Crypt of the Moon Spider, by Nathan Ballingrud. This was an impulse read from the library, one I knew wouldn’t be a comfortable one for me given the premise. It ultimately turned out more uncomfortable for me than I’d expected with some vivid imagery (let’s just say it’s not one for the arachnophobic, and leave it there), and I didn’t love it.
8. Yellowface, by Rebecca F. Kuang. This ended up being a five-star read for me, but I tend toward genre reads rather than this more literary sort of choice, so I really wasn’t sure how I’d find it. It felt like watching a trainwreck, with a main character both despicable and pitiable, and it was fascinating.
9. The Gabriel Hounds, by Mary Stewart. I remember reading this as one of the first Mary Stewart books I read — I can’t remember if it was the first, that might’ve been Touch Not The Cat, but I definitely wasn’t sure whether it was going to be my thing. It was definitely before I started reading romance in general, at any rate. And I had a lot of fun!
10. Solo Leveling (manhwa adaptation), by Dubu. I wasn’t sure whether Solo Leveling would be my thing: it sounded a bit dark, and very battle focused. Honestly, I’m not sure why I did give it a shot — but I ended up really sucked in, and quickly acquired the whole series. Now I definitely wouldn’t say no to trying the light novel, too.

So there we go, I did manage to come up with ten! Very curious to see what others’ picks are.