There cannot be any genre distinction that is more finely-grained than the line between literary fiction and women's fiction

Generally speaking, I am in favor of genre distinctions. They help you find the books that you like. People can complain all they want about how genre ghettoization prevents books from being recognized by the literary mainstream, but whatever. The point of books isn't to win awards...it's to win readers. And I see no evidence that the existence of genre…