Okay, so whenever I input books in a spreadsheet - whether it's books I've read, books bought, books I wanted, etc., there's always a column in there for genre. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one :) Lately, I've been wondering how long do we have to wait till a certain era/period qualifies as "historical" LOL. Or more bluntly: What genre do books set in the 1970-2000 belong?
Why do I bring this up? Well it seems like some authors are getting nostalgic, particularly of the 80-90s - and deliberately choose to set their books in that time period. I feel there's been such advances in technology starting around 2000 - internet, computers, cell phones, tablets and so on - that I personally feel like books set in that period of time should be categorized as contemporary...
By the way, I'm not talking about books that were written during that period. Take the Chesapeake quartet by Nora Roberts which was written in 1998. Those, I would still categorize as contemporary romance because they were... But authors who right now are choosing to set their books in the 80s or 90s because of nostalgia, because things were different, for example Eleonora & Park by Rainbow Rowell. Those are the books I'm talking about.
So, what genre are they? If the WWII era is historical, when does the 1970-2000 era become historical? Or perhaps we should simply find a new genre category for those books?
I don't have an answer to this, but I'm really curious to hear your thoughts about it! :)
