Erin's Favorite Themes

I was thinking recently about themes that really appeal to me in literature, movies, etc. Our Netflix queue is just about empty - even when we searched their massive archives, we didn't turn up much that we wanted to watch. And at my last book club, none of the suggestions for the next book to read really sparked my interest. So what is it that I like, anyway?
- Coming of age stories. I love that complicated time between childhood and adulthood when everything is fresh and emotions run high. It was scary at the time, but now I can look back on it and enjoy dissecting it.
- Stories about people who are isolated in some way and not sure how to fix that, who in the end don't have to fix it because other people reach out to them and build social networks that involve them. I'm intrigued by the idea that all you have to do is exist, and others will bridge the gap. I don't think that's true in real life, but it's a plot device that I wish applied to my life.
- Revisionist history. Time travel stories where people get a second chance to live their lives and make different choices. I tuned into the Lexmas episode of Smallville on the basis of a 5-second trailer that suggested that theme, the only episode I've watched from that whole series. And I rented Sliding Doors, which otherwise looked unpromising. Neither was really great, but I still like the theme.
- Teenagers with supernatural powers. I must be interested in this, based on my eager watching of Buffy and Roswell.
- Stories about people who work hard and have a good sense of humor. That cuts out a lot of the classics, unfortunately.
- Lately, stories about pregnancy and birth. Not so much kids - everyone writes about their kids, but it's somehow not that appealing to read about other people's kids. I never think they're quite as cute as the authors do. I do like reading about pregnancy though, because then the future child is unknown and could be anyone, and it's easier to imagine myself in the story. And birth, because it's still so amazing to me that it works.
- Young adult fiction, because it's written taking the audience into consideration. I use that as the criterion for a lot of stuff. My husband laughs at me for it - like any cultural product is created in a vacuum without the audience in mind. But some of it is! Young adult fiction, for example, is written to inspire, entertain, or instruct, which makes it pleasant to read, whereas a lot of adult fiction is written to express some great unwieldy theme in post-modern culture.
- Books or movies with rich themes for discussion. They don't have to be unwieldy. Just rich.