The experience of reading in a genre you've never read before — not just a book you'd normally skip, but an entire genre with its own conventions and codes that you have to learn as you go — is one of the most productive reading experiences available. You're reading naively, without the pattern recognition that genre familiarity provides.

I came to romance fiction late and embarrassingly — someone I respect admitted to loving certain romance novels and I tried them. The genre has conventions I didn't know: the HEA (happily ever after) is a contract, not just a likely ending; the will-they-won't-they is a feature, not a problem. Understanding these conventions changed how I read individual novels.

Every genre has its own form of sophistication. The experience of discovering that sophistication from outside it is worth having.