As a Christian do you naturally gravitate towards reading Christian novels, or do you read a good amount of non Christian reading material as well?

Do you often find yourself looking for Christian parallels in books you read, even if the book wasn't written by a Christian?

I do look for parallels in pretty much anything I read, but I generally (ashamedly ) steer away from most Christian fiction because I've been burned by a lot of poorly written material. However if I'm going to read a romance, I only ever read Christian. I think that's pretty much one of the only genres Christian fiction has nailed... not sure if that's a good or bad thing. Mostly though, I gravitate towards reading secular YA fiction if I'm going to read fiction (which I don't do a lot of these days). The dystopian theme that's been going lately has me hooked.

Don't be ashamed, BushMaid. Most Christian Fiction is terrible and if more Christians would admit that we might be able to do something about it. I rarely, if ever, read Christian fiction myself and don't want to be known as a Christian author. I don't have any Christian themes, messages, or morals in any of my books (except Lightning Ranger, and that comes off very, very subtle.) I do, however, generally, write from a Christian worldview. As in that I portray right and wrong by biblical standards and some of my novels (City of Lies comes to mind) read rather like a 50K word proverb: "If you behave in such and such a manner, such and such will be fall you."

No I also agree with you, Bushy! I never specifically buy 'Christian fiction'

One of my pet hates about fiction written by Christians, is often it seems fake and totally not what this world is really like.

I'm with you on romance - I hate stumbling across scenes I don't really want to read in the romance genre, so although I do on recommendations, most of the time I now stick to Christian romance.

I'm with you there as well, Jaynin. I do not write 'Christian' fiction. I don't aim to push Christian morals, ideals and etc in my stories either. I would love to see more fiction being published in the market by Christians - without it specifically being labelled as Christian fiction, or the writers as a Christian author.



Yes! I love this, Jaynin. You can have a Christian worldview in your books, without it having to be labeled a Christian novel.

I've grown up reading primarily from two sources: my family's fairly extensive library (heavy on 50s'-through-80s' science fiction), and our local public library's science fiction and fantasy section. (And, to a lesser extent, books that I got at Friends-of-the-Library book sales because they looked interesting.) Neither of these specifically labels any fiction titles as "Christian"; while my parents have, I believe, discarded books that were too offensively opposed to the Faith, they certainly haven't made novels' nominal worldview a primary factor in whether they are bought or kept. And in the period they were buying most of the books, "Christian publishing" houses didn't publish the kinds of fiction they were interested in buying.


Looking for them? No. Finding them? Yes, which isn't surprising given that Christianity both is (or, rather, describes) the fundamental Truth of the cosmos and underlies a great deal of our society's cultural heritage.

I don't really seek out christian or non christian novels either way.
(Though I do agree that I really don't like much blatantly "Christian" works.)

You always get something out of a book being a christian you'll draw christian themes and ideas from the stuff you read even if the author is an atheist trying to express opposing ideas.

What i do with new authors is after I read a few of their works I'll look up some bio's on them and find out what there views on life are. Sometimes its very surprising what authors actually believe in after you've read a bunch of their stuff and getting totally different ideas from them.