Many readers and writers alike tend to find a genre they enjoy, and then stick with it. Fantasy, mystery, love, romance, historical, western, or many others. My mother is a love/mystery reader. My father is a historical/western reader. My husband seems to most enjoy the novels that can almost certainly directly relate to the CSI television series.

It is very much like the video game industry, to be honest; some people like shoot-em-ups, some like first person shooters, some like racing games, some like role playing games. Most people, once they find what they like, never really try other games at all. They just stick with it.

I am no exception to these rules, really. I am a reader, a writer, and a gamer. I read mostly love, mystery, and fantasy; I write in first person most of the time; and I enjoy role-playing type video games - though my gaming tastes have varied throughout the years. I also love racing games, and puzzle games, and, and, and... well, my gaming is very much more "well-rounded" than my reading or my writing.

This inspired me, in a way. I have a Barnes and Noble Nook, and they have a lot of free books. (I'm nearly certain the Kindle market has a ton of free books, too.) Some of the free books advertised to me one day were Zombie books. I flinched. Zombies - cliche in their own way. But then I noticed that the book was free, and I thought to myself, "What the heck? Doesn't hurt to try something that's free."

Now, I hated zombie stuff. Video games, stories - any of it that included zombies automatically made me tune out and move on. So I wasn't hopeful when I opened this book.

I started reading - it was about a couple going through marriage counseling. At least, the first scene was them driving to marriage counseling, and then showing up to some odd things in the building where their therapist's office was. The zombiness started nearly immediately, as by the time they got upstairs and had waited for only a short time, they witnessed their therapist eating some of her best clients. (This was after they had described these clients to one another with a lot of... angst, so to speak.)

I giggled. Morbid, perhaps, but I did. I giggled FAR too much during this book! Granted, there were sad moments, too, but most of the time I was shaking my head at the ridiculousness of it all.

But the part that surprised me the most is that I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed the zombie avoiding, shotgun toting, arguing marital problems of the couple and the world created around them full of dangers - literally there was no place safe for them to go. Their death is inevitable, or undeath I suppose, eventually. I found it to be reading that didn't take a whole lot of thought or brain power - something I need when I've had a long and tiring day and I don't have much brain power left. But I enjoyed it, I was rooting for the couple, hoping they made it through despite everything they were facing.

I, literally, found a new genre that I'm rather pleased with. I did not expect it at all, but I found something I enjoyed, simply because I was willing to try it out.

That particular book was called "Married with Zombies" by Jesse Petersen. Would I call it Noble Prize writing? No, not at all. But I did enjoy it in a way I never imagined.

I think my next conquest will be "Pride and Prejudice... and Zombies" once I retrieve it from my classroom - a friend loaned it to me in August, and I have yet to touch it.

Now, I'm not saying that you will like Zombie books - they are ridiculous in most ways. I just told you my story to illustrate how trying something I didn't expect to enjoy was highly enjoyable to me.

My challenge to you is to find something maybe you haven't tried before, or even something you have and didn't like, to see if you may actually enjoy it now. And if you don't find something the first time, keep trying. It's a new year - the year 2012. What could it hurt to find something new to enjoy?