Reading the same genre forever is like eating the same meal. You’ll survive, but you’ll miss a lot.

Staying inside one genre is comfortable because you already know the rules, which is also why it stops teaching you very much. Different kinds of writing carry different ways of thinking: how an argument is built, how a life is described, how a joke is timed. You pick those up almost by accident, from things shaped differently to what you are used to. The comfort is real and so is the narrowing.

Choose one book or article this month from a category you would not normally touch. Pick a short one. If it is dull by page thirty, try a different sort rather than the same sort again.