reading woes.
Mar. 8th, 2023 09:49 amI haven't read much fiction in general, over the span of my life. I feel badly about this and want to change it, but I'm so picky about books while also knowing nothing about books that it makes it really difficult to navigate recommendations.
My mom and dad were bookworms, and I was a precocious reader as a youngster, I was reading The Secret Garden and The Little White Horse and Linnets and Valerians on my own at age 8.
I tried some Twain at that age but even the slightly boyish violence was too much for me back then, and it is still too much for me now. (I still have a nightmarish vision of a fictional boy stealing fictional crow eggs out of a fictional nest and breaking them that still haunts me.)
I hate Neil Gaiman, sorry not sorry, he sucks. He's filling a void, for sure - we need something like him, but not him. Too violent, too haughty.
I came here to try to think of books I do love, that might help reflect my personality, at![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
areodome1's prompting.
I just... mostly do self-help and Eckhardt Tolle and Mary Oliver poetry, these days.
I feel like I am supposed to like Ursula McGuin but just haven't found the right book of hers, yet?
I love all of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and The Hobbit.
I did love the Secret Garden and the Little White Horse, as a girl, though I wish they had something.... more.
I loved The Name of the Wind and Wise Man's Fear was even better, those are the most recent fantasy books I enjoyed.
School readings like Nietzsche and Kant and Kafka and Sartre and Hume and stuck with me but I don't really like them. Same with Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Dickens and Hemmingway and Fitzgerald and Voltaire and DH Lawrence. They're... fine?
The best part of Elizabeth Gilbert's books is talking about other people's writing process. "Grabbing a poem by its tail," Ruth Stone described her creative process of poetry writing.
Anne Rice is... fun? There is something gently haunting and the right kind of sad about what she does with words. Maybe I should try that new ghost book she wrote that Andrea gave me for Halloween.
I don't know I don't know.
I'm enjoying the Broken Earth trilogy by Jemisin but it also does not resonate.
I don't really love Stephenson.
I've always loathed those Harry Potter books. (Don't tell anybody, I'll lose all my friends who've had annual Harry Potter parties for the last like I dunno 20 years or whatever.)
I just sort of tolerate all this stuff because it's popular and people want to talk about it.
Here is a list of all my disappointments in reading, lol.
I just.... I know there are hundreds of thousands of books that would be life-changingly beautiful for me to read. I just don't know how to find them.
Maybe they're all in other languages?
Like.... this sort of thing is the sort of thing that resonates and makes life more bearable for me... and I haven't found it consistently in any books, really, yet. Not, I believe, because it's not in books, but because I can't find the books that it's in.
My mom and dad were bookworms, and I was a precocious reader as a youngster, I was reading The Secret Garden and The Little White Horse and Linnets and Valerians on my own at age 8.
I tried some Twain at that age but even the slightly boyish violence was too much for me back then, and it is still too much for me now. (I still have a nightmarish vision of a fictional boy stealing fictional crow eggs out of a fictional nest and breaking them that still haunts me.)
I hate Neil Gaiman, sorry not sorry, he sucks. He's filling a void, for sure - we need something like him, but not him. Too violent, too haughty.
I came here to try to think of books I do love, that might help reflect my personality, at
areodome1's prompting.I just... mostly do self-help and Eckhardt Tolle and Mary Oliver poetry, these days.
I feel like I am supposed to like Ursula McGuin but just haven't found the right book of hers, yet?
I love all of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and The Hobbit.
I did love the Secret Garden and the Little White Horse, as a girl, though I wish they had something.... more.
I loved The Name of the Wind and Wise Man's Fear was even better, those are the most recent fantasy books I enjoyed.
School readings like Nietzsche and Kant and Kafka and Sartre and Hume and stuck with me but I don't really like them. Same with Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Dickens and Hemmingway and Fitzgerald and Voltaire and DH Lawrence. They're... fine?
The best part of Elizabeth Gilbert's books is talking about other people's writing process. "Grabbing a poem by its tail," Ruth Stone described her creative process of poetry writing.
Anne Rice is... fun? There is something gently haunting and the right kind of sad about what she does with words. Maybe I should try that new ghost book she wrote that Andrea gave me for Halloween.
I don't know I don't know.
I'm enjoying the Broken Earth trilogy by Jemisin but it also does not resonate.
I don't really love Stephenson.
I've always loathed those Harry Potter books. (Don't tell anybody, I'll lose all my friends who've had annual Harry Potter parties for the last like I dunno 20 years or whatever.)
I just sort of tolerate all this stuff because it's popular and people want to talk about it.
Here is a list of all my disappointments in reading, lol.
I just.... I know there are hundreds of thousands of books that would be life-changingly beautiful for me to read. I just don't know how to find them.
Maybe they're all in other languages?
Like.... this sort of thing is the sort of thing that resonates and makes life more bearable for me... and I haven't found it consistently in any books, really, yet. Not, I believe, because it's not in books, but because I can't find the books that it's in.
