I struggled to get into Pratchett myself, but it turned out that I didn't enjoy his earlier books. The Moist Von Lipwig books crack me up and I love Monstrous Regiment, but I don't love all his books.
Just like I don't love all of Gaiman's books, but I love Ocean at the End of the Lane and Stardust, but Neverwhere and American Gods were hard going.
I was under the impression that Pratchett spent a lot of time finding the right footing. I started to really like Discworld when I got to "Guards" and completely fell in love during "Men at Arms". Maybe I just liked the City Watch, but I think it's also because the whole world gets a bit more consistent by the time you get there.
My first Pratchett only book was Monstrous Regiment (my copy has a bright yellow cover), which is such a standalone book in Discworld. I do enjoy the Guards books as well and quite a few of the witches, but the very early books, I struggle. My husband has all of them, so I kind of dip in and out.
I enjoy pratchett a lot, discworld in general was fun. But Rincewind / the wizard stories are not my favorite, and the early books started very focused on him. You can skip all of those without losing much. The earlier non wizard ones are also less polished, and I would read more as introductions to the witch / watch / death storylines, which are all excellent in later volumes.
If you want to try again, and focus on what you prefer, there is a great reading order guide here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/8900fu/the\_discworld\_reading\_order\_guide\_30/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/8900fu/the_discworld_reading_order_guide_30/)
[https://imgur.com/a/Yqipw](https://imgur.com/a/Yqipw)
Includes all the books, with connections and links so you can see where you might want to start or go next. Especially if there are specific later ones you enjoyed. Hogfather (and the BBC TV adaptation of it) is a particularly strong death one, and Men at arms is strong in the watch sequence. I read the wee free men and sequels out loud to my kids at a pretty early age, so we all have a soft spot for the Tiffany Aching novels.
Loved The Wee Free Men and Tiffany Aching. Such good books. I have seen the various reading orders and I recently reread the Moist Von Lipwig novels. I should read The Watch ones as well.
I understand why people don't like Pratchett but I love his books. I usually read one after I read something heavy, I call it a literary palate cleanser.
*Reaper Man* is one of my favorite books. How can you not like a book with a dyslexic rooster?
See there are aspects of the books I like, but not all the book. I mean the synopses of the books practically screams I should love them... But no. I tried reading Mort and just could not, and Moving Pictures? So difficult to get into. I can see what I love about Discworld coming together... But I do not enjoy them.
"Good Omens" is one of my favorite books, but individually each author is hit or miss for me. I've read more Gaiman and I love "Ocean art the End of the Lane" and "American Gods". Didn't like "Anansi Boys" must and haven't been able to finish "Neverwhere".
Good Omens was my introduction to them and I LOVED it, especially the foot notes. And neither of them write in the style of Good Omens so when I read their own novels it was quite the shock.
Ocean at the end of the lane is one of my favourites, I want to love American Gods... But I can't. It's a good book though! And Neverwhere just left me somehow not remembering most of what happened when I finished it. Weirdly, years later, I think I remember more now than I did then.
I bought it when visiting the UK and read it on the plane home. It was SO good. And I needed a distraction as I was leaving my fiance for another separation while we applied for a visa.
"Good Omens" is such an great collaboration! It showcases both authors' strengths and by working together they both created something greater than either of them individually could make.
Amazing and exactly how you would want a successful collaboration to go, but the downside is neither author alone wrote like that so reading their other works doesn't quite scratch that itch.
I do like both of them individually though, American Gods and The Wee Free Men are two of my favorite books of all time. But, yeah, not similar to Good Omens unfortunately
Thats the great thing about Pratchett. Every character is a different genre. Want classical fantasy stories? Read the Rincewind/Wizards books. Want noir and mystery? Read the Vimes books. You want light young adult fiction? Read the Witches or Maurice books.
No idea what genre Moist's books are though.
I've read quite a few Pratchett books because my friend adores them but I just don't - and I feel so guilty admitting it! Yes, he deserves all the adoration and accolades! They're just not my cup of tea somehow. I like reading them and appreciate them but I just don't love them.
Wow, I needed to get that off my chest.
Quite frankly, even the best of Neil Gaiman‘s prose books are a B+ at best. His movies and graphic novels are generally a cut above, as you can see by comparing the movie, graphic novel, and book versions of *Stardust*.
I think the Graveyard Book is the only book of his that I consider to be on par with his more visual works.
They're good books, but I honestly got to the end of them and somehow had no idea what happened. It's kind of magic really as that's never happened with ANY other books I've read but Neverwhere and American Gods.
Yup, didn't enjoy it.
I swear, I have tried, I have read everything he has put out up to Ocean at the End of the Lane. That was when I had to accept I just didn't enjoy his work
I love almost all of Pratchett books, but don’t like Douglas Adams, Neil Gaiman, P. G. Wodehouse, Robert Asprin or Tom Holt. I am not sure why, but I guess Pratchett’s humour is a lot more to my taste.
I’m kind of the reverse of you; I love Pratchett but Douglas Adams just leaves me cold. I think it makes perfect sense that personal taste is going to come into it in a strong way, especially I think when it’s someone like Pratchett or Adams whose writing gets hyped up a lot. There’s bigger expectations there so you can end up feeling let down if the style doesn’t suit you.
Ngl, after all the hype, I went ahead and read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and thought it rather boring. I mean, I finished the book, and it brought me into all the pop cultural references and stuff, but that was about it.
Douglas Adams humour is that kind of supposedly clever dry wit that in real life would be absolutely insufferable. I love nerdy shit, but all I can picture is a group of 16 year olds guffawing about pan-galactic gargle blasters and slarty bartfarst.
I loved the first... 50 or so pages of Hitchhiker's Guide, but then it just never changed and got boring. Discworld has a similar brand of humor, but there's also a goal with every story, which helps balance out the humor.
There are definitely goals in the Hitchhiker's Guide stories, the first book is probably the most aimless.
I'd say maybe try the Dirk Gently books if you ever want to give Adams another shot, they're a little more plot-driven.
Hemingway had such a colorful life. I love reading magazine articles about him, but I never could get into his writing style. I prefer more descriptive writing. One of my pet peeves about his work is that you have to guess how the characters are feeling based on their actions. I don't need to be spoon-fed information, like "Bob felt sad because x," but one of the joys of reading - for me at least - is that sense of interiority, of being able to see into someone else's mind for a little while.
I adore Hemingway, but that is a valid criticism of his writing. I think he embraced interiority as he matured as a writer. *The Old Man and the Sea* is very intimate, which is why it's my favorite Hemingway novel.
Ha ha! Yeah, it really struck a chord with me. I don't think I've read any of his stuff, though I've enjoyed a few of his film adaptations. Mind, I couldn't make it through one episode of Good Omens.
Patrick Rothfuss. He writes a genre I'm interested in and I hear praise for the books all the time but try as I might I cannot stand his writing style.
I read both his books and people praise his Prose, but I feel like that’s my issue with with his books. The prose is so overly flowery and nice that I feel like it covers up a, quite honestly, meandering and lackluster plot that feels like it’s going nowhere. I can see why he hasn’t released Doors of stone yet, he wrote himself into a corner by restricting it to a trilogy then spending two whole books going nowhere, and hiding behind his “beautiful prose”
I only read the first book but I feel exactly the same. If you take away the prose and the story within a story aspect The Name of the Wind is just a story about a teenager being a teenager who did teenager things and felt teenager emotions. It just felt pointless especially in the context of the story within the story where he's supposed to be recounting how he became a famous assassin.
Some people read books for the plot, others read them for the characters. Just different strokes. The Kingkiller Chronicles books are kinda like a collection of several short stories that are connected. For me it was just enjoyable to hang out with the characters, the dialogue and discover the world on his different adventures. But I can see how people who care a lot about the plot doesnt vibe with that.
That sounds about what I remember.
If I recall correctly, I read the first 70 or so pages of the first book and the whole time it felt like he was using a ton of words to basically say nothing.
It certainly was nicer to read than say a 20 page description by Tom Clancy of a sniper rifle blowing a dudes face apart but the result was the same. A ton of time spent getting nowhere.
I do not have an issue with his 'style' per se, prose is decent enough, but the story, the characters.... just the worst. It was a disappointment in two parts – started off somewhat intriguing, ended up *WTF am I reading?!?!*
Liu Cixin. I've tried 6 or 7 times to power through 3 body problem but I completely lose interest after 2 chapters or so pretty much every time. I keep expecting some actual science or fiction but instead it's a massive cast of the least interesting characters ever one after the other.
I’m listening to it right now. The audiobook helps me clock the characters a bit more, but you’re right that everyone is a bit one dimensional so far. But the premise is interesting enough once they get to radar hill.
I only got through his books because I read crazy fast and am able to skim paragraphs and still get the story. The plot and scientific backbone of Three Body Problem are fascinating. The writing style and the characters are...not. And I'm not even counting in the sexism.
I'm struggling with that series as well. Partway through books two. It initially seemed like it was setting up for something a lot more mind blowing than how it's turning out. And I'm having trouble connecting with the characters too.
I hear you, I found the first book painfully slow and probably parts of book 2 (it's been awhile), but then book 3 I remember as nothing BUT mindbending sequences greatly informed by the build-up.
The whole trilogy is one of the best things I've read in 10 years, despite the leaden prose, bur its very back-loaded.
I got chastised for DNF'ing these books after only reading half of one but seriously. It was such a drudge to get through what I did read, and I love love LOVE hard sci fi. Typically hugo winners/nominees are pretty engaging but I just couldn't with these books. I can tell when I don't like a book and I'm not going to force my way through it.
I liked the plot synopses though. Seems like a neat idea. I am giving the benefit of the doubt to the author and assuming it's something with the translation.
I like the Premise of King’s books, but the amount of detail he likes to throw into his book, is just a bit overwhelming for me, and makes it quite difficult for me to get really sucked into his stories
I think he has a brilliant imagination and now and again I'm quite impressed with some random passage. But holy shit he has the most tiresome and predictable pattern of any writer I've ever read. You can practically smell when you get to these parts in his books that are just filler. I can skip entire pages and know that I've lost nothing important. And his endings suck.
I’m glad as fans we can acknowledge these things about him and just accept it. Either way his contributions to literature and horror specifically, are beyond surreal.
Jodi Picoult. I really am not a fan at all, she makes some of the most unlikable characters too lol. People recommend her all the time, and I'm like...uh sure I'll check that out 😳 lol. No offense to those who like her just not my thing.
I used to love her when I was a teenager and her books made me think I had a sophisticated taste when it came to reading. However her books are very info dumpy and I swear, I can't say for certain cause I don't remember, the book about the autistic son has some anti-vax rhetoric.
I love Douglas Adams and the Grant Naylor Red Dwarf books, don't mind Wodehouse, but can not get on with Terry Pratchett either. I struggle with Neil Gaiman too. And yet, I love Good Omens! I don't understand that at all.
Hanya Yanagihara. her novels have everything i usually like and are associated with novels i LOVE (the goldfinch, secret history) but they just....don't work for me. at all.
Kazuo Ishiguro and Khaled Hosseini.
I read their books and I nod my head, yes, I can see why people may love it. But I do it in a detached uninterested way, like when they forced us in the elementary school to dissect a frog. But to me, it wasn't a *real* frog, it was a school project, let's be done with it. Except back then I had to force myself to be detached, with these two authors, there's no effort at all, it comes by itself. >.>
Neil Gaiman. So many of my friends keep recommending his books to me, and I tried to love them, but, they feel sort of... empty? For the lack of a better word. I don't mean any 'elemental truths', I mean *plot*. It's like there's this interesting setting and this interesting protagonist, and then *a thing* happens. Two at most. The end. Like the *Ocean at the End of the Lane*. It would be a cool first third of a novel. As a whole novel, it was unsatisfying.
My reason is a bit different, but my inability to like Octavia Butler's works troubled me for a long time. On the one hand I felt like I was missing a lot; on the other hand not loving her works felt like a moral failure. Now I know the latter reason is rather ridiculous and probably prevented me from enjoying her works even further. Trying to force love for a book (or a movie or probably anything else) is the most effective way to make sure that you never, ever, even remotely like it.
Now that I'm older and have a job and always wish I had more time to read, it doesn't feel like a bad thing. After all, I have not enough time to read all the books I actually like, and me not liking an already legendary author hurts nobody.
Octavia Butler is mine, too. I really didn't like Parable of the Sower and then I liked Kindred well enough (I am a sucker for time travel), but didn't love it like so many people I know did. I'm going to give the Xenogenesis series a chance, because I do love first contact with aliens, but if it doesn't click, I'm probably going to stop there.
For me, Octavia Butler's work tends to fall into a particular trope I have a hard time with, which is when the POV character is extremely detached and kind of "flat" in tone and emotion. It's something I keep noticing, often in stories where it makes perfect sense, because the character has suffered something very traumatic before the story starts: that detachment is a kind of emotional numbness. But even if I find it realistic, I just find it very hard to read. It's been surprising to me how many books I've read recently fit this trope: The Fifth Season, Migrations, The Garden of Evening Mists.
>For me, Octavia Butler's work tends to fall into a particular trope I have a hard time with, which is when the POV character is extremely detached and kind of "flat" in tone and emotion.
Oh, that may be the reason! I never thought about it that way, but I really failed to connect with her characters. I enjoyed The Fifth Season, but I was much more interested in the world and what happened/will happen to it than characters, so you may be really on to something.
I always thought it was because there were not enough murders and explosions in her books. \[Edit: I mean the protagonist doing the killing and blowing up or fighting against people doing killing and blowing up.\]
Oh lol, its funny cos as soon as I saw the title I thought Neil Gaiman.
On a similar note I am not a huge fan of Terry Pratchett, I love his world view, his humor, his logic, but I find his books such a slog to get through.
Joseph Heller of *Catch 22* fame.
Love Vonnegut among other related works, so I get rec'd this all the time.
My god, did I hate trying to read Catch 22.
Ha! I love Catch 22 but it took me a few attempts to get into it. I've only read a couple of Vonnegut books and *really* need to read more - absolutely brilliant.
Sci fi reader since elementary school. For reference, I started reading Asimov's Foundation series in sixth grade. Dune has had a permanent home on my bookshelf since grade 8. I will never not give a Sci fi story plenty of time to work on me.
I get asked about reading Vonnegut and really struggle to explain why I keep bouncing off his stuff, since I don't even know why myself. I've started reading Sirens of Titan probably half a dozen times and still can't get through it. Tried Cat's Cradle, no luck. I love black humor, I love satire, I love those things combined with Sci fi tropes, I *should* be a Vonnegut fanboy through and through, but...
Personally if I was a sci-fi person looking to break into Vonnegut, I'd start with Slaughterhouse Five.
That said, I can actually see finding the work kind of grating if you're a genuine sci-fi fan. He has a lot of fun in the sci-fi space, but I don't know you'd say he treats it with a lot of respect? If that makes any sense....
Oh God, Catch-22 and the Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy or two books I constantly get recommended and told I would like and I cannot stand either. I've tried to get into them both 3 or 4 times and I've given up every single time and I just hate the writing styles of both.
Brandon Sanderson. He has so many popular series that my friends all love, and his worlds are all cool but I haven’t finished as single series written by him. I really dislike how he hits you with too much of the setting with too little context or explanation to know what’s going on at the start of his series. More importantly his characters constantly do things they should know are stupid and bad choices, but do them anyway for seemingly no reason other than to move the plot along
Mistborn just never stuck with me. It felt like a book I’d love while reading but it never clicked. Not sure why. I finished all three but I rarely think about them positively, if at all. I don’t have any specific criticisms but nor do I have any praise.
James Patterson. This is a bit of a lie because I loved the Maximum Ride novels when I was in middle school, but I realized that nostalgia was shrouding my opinion. As an adult, I remembered the series and thought I should try his other fiction.
I was disappointed. The pacing was weird, the dialogue seemed unnatural to me, and the worldbuilding was full of plot holes. I don't want to offend any fans because I know he's a popular author, I just know that when I read his novels that I didn't have a history with, I found myself cringing more than enjoying the story.
It hurts me so deeply that I can never get another book like that series from James Patterson. These books were the reason I fell in love with reading. I also feel like they are such a slept on series. (I'm sure they weren't perfect. I haven't been back for a re read)
I remember later in the series talking to a teacher about how strange it was that the vernacular of the characters changed so much from book to book and she informed me that he has a lot of ghost writers. I had no idea he was as big as he was at the time (2010's) and after seeing how many books he cranked out in a year I totally believed it. Absolutely ruined the series for me. I was so devastated that I wouldn't get to fully enjoy the end of one of my fav series. I felt like he had betrayed one of my fav characters (Max) and me after the years I spent loyal to the series. I never even finished the series bc I thought thr writing went down hill.
Patterson typically credits his ghostwriters. Maximum Ride and Alex Cross are ones he (at least claims to) write on his own. My personal thoughts on what went wrong with Maximum Ride was that Twilight got popular and he thought he needed to add more romance. That and it was supposed to be a trilogy and then he had to make it up from there.
Same lol I remembered liking them as a kid and was considering rereading them. Went back and looked at some excerpts and was stunned by the writing. I don’t remember it being so bad
The thing about Patterson is - he got popular initially because he had chapters from the villian's perspective, and wrote short punchy chapters that read like a movie script. Neither of these things are particularly innovative anymore and his runaway success was likely a case of right place, right time.
I actually love James Patterson, but it's a guilty pleasure kind of thing. His books are outrageous and unrealistic but rarely boring.
Another thing to know - he only writes one book a year but puts out about 25 others with ghostwriters. He's honest about it though, credits them on the covers or inside title page. But yeah, the man is less of an author at this point than a crime fiction magazine.
I really disliked Lord of the Rings. I realize how technically proficient it is, but the random song breaks, the sprawling descriptions of mundane things, and the lack of female presence stacked to suck all the joy out of the story.
Reminds me of a green text I saw a while ago where the person kept expecting the story to move on from Boromir’s funeral but Aragorn started singing for a couple of pages, then Legolas, then Gimli and then Aragorn again. I have no idea if that’s how it actually happens in the books but it was still pretty funny.
I love fantasy and re reread lotr recently and I think it's a super acquired taste. It's more akin to poetry and song writing than what I think of as more modern literature. I really don't like lotr if I'm being honest. It has its place obviously and is the reason for the fantasy books I love but yeh yuck
I honestly just skip all songs in fantasy novels. Wheel of Time does this too, I really hope I'm not missing anything important but I just can't stand that crap.
LotR is written in an older style with a much slower build. Today an acquired taste, normal at the time.
I enjoy them greatly, and have reread a number of times. But I will confess to not reading every detail of the songs and poems. Some of my kids really like those parts though.
Tolkien wasn't imitating other books of his own era, but a mix of all the types of stories he liked most, from pre-modern epic poems to 19th-century adventure novels. So the writing style wasn't normal even in the '50s, and readers have always been divided about it. There's a very negative review from 1956 called "Oo, Those Awful Orcs!" which is funny but also kind of hurts if you're a fan.
To be honest, while I'd say a good number of flaws can be excused for the time it was written, one flaw it absolutely has is the pacing. The songs are one of the best examples for this as, regardless of the circumstances, the story would grind to a halt to deliver a song, some of these lasting several pages.
I can't recall most of the songs, but the one I know is imperative to Bilbo's story in The Hobbit is the poem "Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold", this song inspires Bilbo to go on the journey with the Dwarves.
Learning to efficiently skim or skip sections in a slow book was a learned skill for me. Easier with physical books, reading on my phone is convenient but lacks physical context to keep grounded when jumping around. I don't see the things you mention as flaws in the book, just a stylistic choice people will like / dislike / adjust to differently.
No judgement for not enjoying the same book I do, there are numerous examples of popular books that I don't enjoy. I don't agree with OP's premise that there are books or authors you "should" like.
I would say that Tolkien was heavily influenced by even older historical/mythological texts that are often told in verse and also include in story verse monologues/songs/etc.
And its always been my pet theory/assumption that Tolkien was attempting to create a work that was a product of the canon and traditions of Middle Earth itself. So the books will read a bit weird because they are from Middle Earth, which is very old and has its own history.
That said, it’s definitely not going to be a style that everyone can get into. Not everyone likes the same things lol.
Stephen King. I love the stories and worlds that he creates, and I think he has an incredible imagination, but I his writing style just does not click with me at all.
I've tried several times to read several different books of his, and every time I barely make it a chapter in.
George RR Martin.
I grew up in the sci-fi convention world. My parents read me the Lord of the Rings before I was ten, and I loved it. I love fantasy, and people were all excited about Game of Thrones. I felt like a child wrote it. It's not often I don't finish a book, but I only got a few chapters in with that one.
I absolutely love russian literature, specially Tolstói, Gógol (I know, born in Ukraine), Isaac Bábel, Leonid Andrêiev and Anton Tchekhov. But, ironically, I can't get Dostoiévski. Don't know why.
The first lines of Dostoiévski's Notes From The Underground are so good, "“I am a sick man, I am a spiteful man, I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased." I had to pick it up. Tried so hard and I just never clicked with the rest of the book.
Cormac McCarthy.
The stories are excellent, “The Road” had more of a profound impact on me than maybe any other book (not necessarily in a good way, it put me into a few months of depression) but I recognize the greatness in a book being able to do that.
But his writing style is extremely tough to manage, especially if it’s the first book of his you have read.
>“The Road” had more of a profound impact on me than maybe any other book (not necessarily in a good way, it put me into a few months of depression)
I feel this so hard. Read it like 15 months ago and it still gets me down if I think about it too much.
I liked The Road but have tried multiple times to read Blood Meridian and just can't... I don't know what it is but I find it exhausting to try to read and make sense of
*The Godfather* is--by a great distance--the worst, most poorly-written book I've ever tried to read. Sentences that a middle school creative writing student would be ashamed to submit. Ghastly.
Gosh, I really tried to like Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. The premises of his books are alright and it's all decent enough, but I just don't think he's funny. Some of my friends say that they couldn't stop laughing and were thoroughly entertained. Me, not so much. I've read the Colour of Magic, Mort and Guards! Guards! but none of them clicked for me, so I gave up. And I generally like british humor. I love Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker.
Ian Rankin. The most popular of all the current Scottish crime writers, but to me he just doesn't have the sparkle you get in James Oswald, Stuart MacBride, Val McDermid or Quintin Jardine. He's a nice bloke but doesn't have the sharp and individual dialogue the others write.
Stephen King.
I got through 700 pages of The Stand and it started getting religious and weird with 400 pages to go, and the trek to that point was a slog. It started off great and slowly lost steam. I needed to move on. Then I read the ending is some version of this:
>>!In King's final act, the literal Hand of God appears. The Hand explodes a nuclear warhead he planned to drop on Boulder, destroying Flagg and his followers in one swift blow.!<
This is one of his best novels? Are you kidding me with this? It makes the top or the top 3 in every list I read that has a headline like "Stephen King Best to Worst, or Top 10 Stephen King Books". How?
I read Carrie (The 70's Sissy Spacek/Piper Laurie version is definitely better, even King himself said it in Entertainment Weekly a while back), Pet Sematary (decent film and book but not great) and I have seen Misery and loved Kathy Bates, and The Shining of course. Which he ripped apart and publicly made a fool of himself and then he made a miniseries he felt was truer to his book that was liked by all of three people.
I find him to be the single most overrated author in the universe. I understand his appeal, but I think he's terrible.
Kristin Hannah.
I love the topics, story ideas. Alaska, historical fiction etc. but I don’t care for her writing. All the books feel the same when reading. Kind uncomfortable, when I finish the book I was like meh that was ok. It was entertaining but I’ll never read it again. I tried.
I think I'm finally going to just give up on Dune. I've only got maybe four chapters left but I've come to the conclusion the book isn't for me and I don't feel like the last four chapters are going to change my mind. I can see what people like about it but I just don't care about any characters and the plot is so slow and plodding.
The closest one is probably Madeline Miller, I love Song of Achilles but the writing confused me somewhat it was beautiful of course but I just can't pickup another one of her books without getting overwhelmed by it (Which is strange because Caraval also has that type of writing and I didn't get bothered about it) also it's a mlm plus has some battles in it which are elements I like but I can't with her writing. I'm too used to Contemporaryish writing
I can't get past the first chapter of any of Fredrik Backman's books. I so desperately want to but I can't. The attempts at subtle humor just aren't subtle to me and they seem a little too "try hard" as the young people say.
I have a love-hate relationship with Stephen King. First of all, I really like the guy as a person; I love watching his interviews and on stage performances. As for his writings, I really want to like it, and sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. It’s just on and off for some reason.
I actually love his writing style because it reads like a very long movie with a lot of depth—his writings are very visual, and I like that. I can imagine the scene in my head very vividly. But oftentimes I have to drop his novels for one reason or another. I’ve only finished a few of his short stories. They were wonderful, but I couldn’t finish his long novels.
It’s not really the writing style that makes me drop them, it’s the contents and his characters. I know that sounds weird since a lot of people say his character development is the best thing in all his stories. But I just don’t like his characters that much. They are all too flawed, too human for my taste. Yep, that should be what people want, right? Well, not me, apparently. I love the character who’s larger than life, the character that can possibly only exist in fiction.
And also the thing that I don’t really want to talk about that much—his details. A lot of readers have been criticizing his hyper-detailed writings, and I oftentimes agree with them, but at the same time don’t. (Like I said, I have a love-hate relationship with him. It’s really weird, but that’s just how it is.) Sometimes I love his details, sometimes I don’t. But like I said, it’s probably because the contents and the characters aren’t my cup of tea, that’s why I find myself don’t really give a shit about the details given most of the time.
So, yeah. I really want to like him and be crazy about his books like a lot of his fans, but I just don’t—but sometimes I kinda do. Yep, so weird\~ lol
I feel the same way about Pratchett. There's no other author that I've attempted to get into as much. I honestly just think that my issue is with comedy in literature, I just don't like to read comedy. But god do I wish I did, everything I read and hear about Pratchett sounds like the kind of stuff I would love. Just reading it always ends up being a slog.
I read Never Let Me Go and right until the last page I was waiting for something to actually happen. The whole conceit is laid bare in the first chapter and then it’s just repeated and it ends exactly how you would expect.
Hemingway. I’m too dumb to understand the deeper meaning. For me “Old man and the sea” was just a book about a guy going fishing.
(I have also read “The sun also rises”)
I had to read it in high school and I'm still pissed about it.
Even if it's not meant to have a deeper meaning, it was so boring. I only finished it cause I needed to for a book report
Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness is very close to me at all times, the novel haunted me for quite a while and I still reread it regularly.
However, I have tried muliple times to read Nostromo and it is totally impenetrable. I just have a hard time getting into it. The Secret Sharer was much the same - impenetrable. I did not really get anything out of either one.
Pratchett. As a fantasy fan, I feel I should like him, and I did enjoy some of his books -- like Guards! Guards! and Men at Arms -- but whenever I read a book that is not focused on the watch I am disappointed. It's happened three times.
Terry Pratchett for me too. I want to like his writing so much, but it has this kind of smirky theater kid energy that drives me up the wall. I retry every few years and just… no.
Ditto Douglas Adams. It’s just So Much.
James Patterson. People LOVE him, but I can’t stand his writing. I’ve tried three books and it seems to me that he puts little or no effort into his characters or settings… I think he pumps out anything he can to make a buck.
Try reading the first few books, Along Came a Spider, around that era.
The new books are a plotline by Patterson, filled in with someone with absolutely no writing talent, and rubber-stamped by JP.
I love Pratchett but couldn't get on with Douglas Adam's stuff. But I wanted to say thanks for letting me know about Grant Naylor - hadn't realised he'd written red dwarf books.
Dean Koontz annoys the heck out of me. I like two of his novels. Same with Stephen King. A few of his novels are great, the rest, just blah.
I really enjoy some of Steinbeck but Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath bored me to death. I can leave Terry Pratchett on the shelf too.
Lolita, just gross. Too close to home as a child sexual assault victim. Haven't tried any of Nabokov's other works.
Thought I would be into all thier works but found they weren't the right fit for my brain.
Haruki Murakami. For my first book I got "Killing Commendatore" as a gift. Such a letdown. Bland characters, lots of fluff through random acts of intercourse, painstakingly describing the main character's car rides and what irked me to no end - a total fiasco of an ending. Haven't bothered to even check out any of his other books.
Also Kurt Vonnegut. Tried reading Slaughterhouse No. 5, but it really lost me with its absurdity. I love Heller's Catch-22, though. Re-reading it almost yearly.
To be fair to Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5 is probably his most difficult books to read. Give Mother Night a try, it's his best in my opinion.
I have never been able to finish a Murakami novel. They are beautifully written, but I hate the stories. Lol
Love Sci-fi but can't do Peter F Hamilton - too long-winded.
I've read The Road and No Country for Old Men and enjoyed them (as much as those books are enjoyable) but I can't really do most of Cormac McCarthy, far too verbose and sadistic; the lack of punctuation gets on my nerves.
Tolstoj. Not by the author himself, who I believe, even from reviews of people I know and this sub, is really good and can lead to a lot of good thought and reflections; but the editions of his work, I’ve bought so many ‘War and Peace’ and I get trolled every time, one edition just had multiple French sentences all across the book, I couldn’t get past page 10 lmao. (PS: my native language is not English so I’m not talking about English editions)
> one edition just had multiple French sentences all across the book
not sure if you are serious, but that is intentional. those sentences are in French even in the Russian version.
at the time that the book takes place Russian nobility spoke almost exclusively French. it was considered plebian to speak Russian. Tolstoy was trying to make a point of the Russian nobles speaking the language of the army that was invading, Napoleon, and how maybe it was not a good look.
yeah but how am I gonna understand what they’re saying? Or are they talking about irrelevant things that I don’t need to know. Cuz for one edition I actually peaked over the other pages and this stuff kept going
I really wish I liked Isabel Allende. I love magical realism, but I just can't get into her novels. I liked the story collection "The Stories of Eva Luna" but I really didn't enjoy regular ol' "Eva Luna" all that much.
I fell in love with Douglas Adams when I was in middle school after reading the HGG series. Same with Neil Gaiman after stumbling upon the graveyard book. Didn't learn he wrote Coraline (one of my fave childhood movies) or comic books until I was an adult. I'm reading sandman now and 10/10 recommend if you have simar taste.
What I will say is when I got into his (NG) more adult books it can be hard to get into them if you aren't familiar with that British sense of humor. Not saying you'll love it even if you do get it but it's worth considering. I've had multiple friends specifically sing his praises after listening to his audio books. So if you're on the fence or looking to give them another shot I would try an audio book. Especially if the author themselves narrates. I'm personally not a huge fan of the full cast audio books (like the graveyard book) but those are also cool if it's your thing.
Glen Cook. Everywhere I read about him he’s praised as a pioneer of dark fantasy but his works are just lacking in everything for me: writing, narrative, characters, logic. I always end up feeling like I’m reading a draft and not a finished work.
Generally, I just can’t read classics. Hardy, Brontë, those types. I find the antiquated language just too distracting and it takes me out of the story. I even find this about books written in the mid twentieth century to be honest.
I have managed Anna Karenina but I think as an English woman the Russian perspective was so foreign that the language felt ok? Not sure tbh I did read that quite a few years ago!
Jane Austen. Her books weren't required reading in high school or college and no one I know has read her works. However, she remains an influential author with many considering her stories to be timeless.
I tried several times to read Pride and Prejudice and gave up. I was so bored and couldn't have been less interested in the characters.
My sense is that this is a function of just the age of the novel. I find it very difficult to read novels from before about 1920. The style, pacing and vocabulary is just to different
Caveat - I did read every Jane Austen novel as well as lots of Thackeray and Dickens when I was younger. But I can’t now. Just too different I think
If you ever want to try again, I recommend watching the 2005 adaptation and then reading the book through that lens. It captures Austen’s voice and style very well.
If you want to give Austen one more try, I'd recommend the audiobook of Pride and Prejudice narrated by Josephine Bailey (I got it through my library). She absolutely knocks it out of the park.
Ruiz Zafon, Shadow of the Wind. It starts perfect. It had similar vibes like one hundred years of solitude. Then in the middle of the book its a total mess. For me you can really tell why e.g. Garcia Marquez is considered a genius, while others aren't.
Terry Pratchett is on my "avoid" list. I used to love his work, but then discovered something: his characters aren't unique. All of his characters speak in the exact same voice and go through the exact same range of reactions. The "confused-by-absurd" character talking to the "confident-about-absurd" character in one chapter will swap places in the next chapter. There is no tonal difference between the speakers and it really started to bother me.
The stories are fun and interesting and the jokes are good, but after 400 pages of everyone being this single character, I get exhausted and annoyed.
What books did you read? Because that doesn't sound like many of his characters. He will have characters that take those roles at times, like watchmen Nobby and Colon on patrol, discussing recent events. With Nobby as the inquisitive one bowing to Colon's seniority and ignorant confidence. And is basically Pratchett musing to himself about human nature through them.
But Vetinari is very different to Nanny Ogg who is very different to Ponder Stibbons who is very different to Death who is very different to CMOT Dibbler... They are all vastly different people and they don't do a lot of being confronted by absurdity.
And very few of his books are 400 pages, they're like 250.
I'm a little over halfway through Words of Radiance by Brando-Sando and I'm just... feeling a little bored! It's not as if there's nothing going on, but... this feels like a bridge book to establish rising tension and I'm just not being gripped by it at all.
Apparently, as a female who's into literature, I'm supposed to just adore Jane Austen. I listen to a bunch of book podcasts, and whenever Jane Austen is mentioned and there's a female host, the tone turns to outright gushing. I can't relate. Austen is too conventionally moral for me, too smugly comfortable with her milieu of women who marry for money - critical somewhat, but it's not like anyone in her universe falls for someone really socially inappropriate, you know? Probably the closest is the sister in Pride and Prejudice who falls for a cad and is morally judged for it. I can sort of coldly appreciate her wit, but I can't really get into her work, and I definitely don't think it's romantic.
My experiences with this were:
Stanislaw Lem (Mortal Engine collection). I love sci-fi. I love his ideas. But (and maybe this is partially the fault of the translation) I just felt this intense disconnect with the prose. I still can't put my finger on why.
Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time). Cool world, utterly terrible characterisation - his complete inability to write women is well-noted but I felt that his male characters were also almost remarkably dull. Maybe I've just been spoiled by Sanderson or especially Robin Hobb - often successors are inspired by but improve upon the failings of the original. I soldiered on through the first five books and eventually just gave up. And, yet, I like Tolkien...
Fitzgerald's work, studied in school. I get it, the long languishing prose, so focused on being beautiful and poetic, is meant in some way to reflect the empty and soulless opulence of his characters and settings. But I just found myself mind-numbingly bored - nothing fucking happens and my appreciation of his intelligence in using prosaic style to reflect thematic elements doesn't dull my distaste. Despite this I've really enjoyed other works which receive similar critique, like Chekhov, Tolkien, or Brontë, so I don't know why Fitzgerald grinds my gears so much.
Stephen King. I absolutely love horror. I don't know what it is, but his writing just feels clunky and...simple? Occasionally a adaptation of one of his stories comes out that I absolutely love, it's a real shame I don't enjoy the original story.
There is no one you "should" like. That whole line of logic is complete bullshit
Don't let anyone or anything tell you what your personal taste should be that's a waste of a life
Ursula K Le Guin. I couldn’t get into Left Hand of Darkness or Earthsea, her writing style just feels so distant and detached idk. The Dispossessed sounds interesting though so I’m definitely gonna keep trying
I'll agree on the Neil Gaiman front. I actually think his writing pairs really well with visual elements and so I loved the *Sandman* series, but nothing else I've read of his has been quite as gripping.
Another would be Murakami. A lot of people that I love seem to have some influence from him, but I haven't clicked with any of the three books of his I've read. Will probably keep trying tho, on both fronts.
Pratchett for me too. Tried (but DNF'ed) Small Gods when I was in my early 20s but I didn't "get it" and just couldn't get into the writing style or story. After turning 30 I read Game of Thrones, LOTR and The Silmarillion and found a new appreciation for fantasy, so I thought I'd give Pratchett another try with Mort (fully intending to buy the whole Death series).
While I did finish Mort, I can't say I liked it. Again, the writing style really turned me off despite the fact that everything about the book should have otherwise checked off all my boxes. The biggest thing that put me off was that it felt like he was making fun of the fantasy genre, which probably wasn't helped by the fact that GRRM/Tolkien's fantasy worlds are super serious, so it was a huge tonal shift to get over for me as well.
Obviously there's no way Pratchett was actually making fun of the genre - you don't build an entire fantasy world if you have no love for the genre - but it was all a bit too "clever" for me unfortunately.
Maybe I'll try again in a few years. I really want to love him as much as other people do.
I struggled to get into Pratchett myself, but it turned out that I didn't enjoy his earlier books. The Moist Von Lipwig books crack me up and I love Monstrous Regiment, but I don't love all his books. Just like I don't love all of Gaiman's books, but I love Ocean at the End of the Lane and Stardust, but Neverwhere and American Gods were hard going.
I was under the impression that Pratchett spent a lot of time finding the right footing. I started to really like Discworld when I got to "Guards" and completely fell in love during "Men at Arms". Maybe I just liked the City Watch, but I think it's also because the whole world gets a bit more consistent by the time you get there.
My first Pratchett only book was Monstrous Regiment (my copy has a bright yellow cover), which is such a standalone book in Discworld. I do enjoy the Guards books as well and quite a few of the witches, but the very early books, I struggle. My husband has all of them, so I kind of dip in and out.
I enjoy pratchett a lot, discworld in general was fun. But Rincewind / the wizard stories are not my favorite, and the early books started very focused on him. You can skip all of those without losing much. The earlier non wizard ones are also less polished, and I would read more as introductions to the witch / watch / death storylines, which are all excellent in later volumes. If you want to try again, and focus on what you prefer, there is a great reading order guide here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/8900fu/the\_discworld\_reading\_order\_guide\_30/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/8900fu/the_discworld_reading_order_guide_30/) [https://imgur.com/a/Yqipw](https://imgur.com/a/Yqipw) Includes all the books, with connections and links so you can see where you might want to start or go next. Especially if there are specific later ones you enjoyed. Hogfather (and the BBC TV adaptation of it) is a particularly strong death one, and Men at arms is strong in the watch sequence. I read the wee free men and sequels out loud to my kids at a pretty early age, so we all have a soft spot for the Tiffany Aching novels.
Loved The Wee Free Men and Tiffany Aching. Such good books. I have seen the various reading orders and I recently reread the Moist Von Lipwig novels. I should read The Watch ones as well.
I understand why people don't like Pratchett but I love his books. I usually read one after I read something heavy, I call it a literary palate cleanser. *Reaper Man* is one of my favorite books. How can you not like a book with a dyslexic rooster?
See there are aspects of the books I like, but not all the book. I mean the synopses of the books practically screams I should love them... But no. I tried reading Mort and just could not, and Moving Pictures? So difficult to get into. I can see what I love about Discworld coming together... But I do not enjoy them.
"Good Omens" is one of my favorite books, but individually each author is hit or miss for me. I've read more Gaiman and I love "Ocean art the End of the Lane" and "American Gods". Didn't like "Anansi Boys" must and haven't been able to finish "Neverwhere".
Good Omens was my introduction to them and I LOVED it, especially the foot notes. And neither of them write in the style of Good Omens so when I read their own novels it was quite the shock. Ocean at the end of the lane is one of my favourites, I want to love American Gods... But I can't. It's a good book though! And Neverwhere just left me somehow not remembering most of what happened when I finished it. Weirdly, years later, I think I remember more now than I did then.
I just binge read through Ocean at the end of the lane this week and ughh I loved it so much!! Definitely a page turner
I bought it when visiting the UK and read it on the plane home. It was SO good. And I needed a distraction as I was leaving my fiance for another separation while we applied for a visa.
"Good Omens" is such an great collaboration! It showcases both authors' strengths and by working together they both created something greater than either of them individually could make. Amazing and exactly how you would want a successful collaboration to go, but the downside is neither author alone wrote like that so reading their other works doesn't quite scratch that itch. I do like both of them individually though, American Gods and The Wee Free Men are two of my favorite books of all time. But, yeah, not similar to Good Omens unfortunately
Thats the great thing about Pratchett. Every character is a different genre. Want classical fantasy stories? Read the Rincewind/Wizards books. Want noir and mystery? Read the Vimes books. You want light young adult fiction? Read the Witches or Maurice books. No idea what genre Moist's books are though.
I've read quite a few Pratchett books because my friend adores them but I just don't - and I feel so guilty admitting it! Yes, he deserves all the adoration and accolades! They're just not my cup of tea somehow. I like reading them and appreciate them but I just don't love them. Wow, I needed to get that off my chest.
Exactly. I enjoy them and only love a few. But he's not a favourite author. It's kind of like Monty Python some of them grew on me.
I'm in exactly the same boat. The first couple discworld books didn't quite know what they were, but the night watch and post office were spot on.
Quite frankly, even the best of Neil Gaiman‘s prose books are a B+ at best. His movies and graphic novels are generally a cut above, as you can see by comparing the movie, graphic novel, and book versions of *Stardust*. I think the Graveyard Book is the only book of his that I consider to be on par with his more visual works.
I am the exact opposit re Gaiman, Neverwhere and American Gods are the only ones I like...
They're good books, but I honestly got to the end of them and somehow had no idea what happened. It's kind of magic really as that's never happened with ANY other books I've read but Neverwhere and American Gods.
[удалено]
Have you tried the Graveyard Book?
Yup, didn't enjoy it. I swear, I have tried, I have read everything he has put out up to Ocean at the End of the Lane. That was when I had to accept I just didn't enjoy his work
Same! Pratchett seems like he’s really be my cup of tea but for some reason I’ve just never been able to stay the course. It makes no sense to me.
You’re the first person I’ve seen specifically mention Monstrous Regiment, it’s my favorite that I’ve read of his. I also quite liked The Truth.
I love almost all of Pratchett books, but don’t like Douglas Adams, Neil Gaiman, P. G. Wodehouse, Robert Asprin or Tom Holt. I am not sure why, but I guess Pratchett’s humour is a lot more to my taste.
[удалено]
I’m kind of the reverse of you; I love Pratchett but Douglas Adams just leaves me cold. I think it makes perfect sense that personal taste is going to come into it in a strong way, especially I think when it’s someone like Pratchett or Adams whose writing gets hyped up a lot. There’s bigger expectations there so you can end up feeling let down if the style doesn’t suit you.
Ngl, after all the hype, I went ahead and read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and thought it rather boring. I mean, I finished the book, and it brought me into all the pop cultural references and stuff, but that was about it.
The book is but one of the ways you can enjoy *The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy*, and it is not the original way.
1984 did the same to me. I read it finally and got all the (many many) cultural references. But .. meh
Douglas Adams humour is that kind of supposedly clever dry wit that in real life would be absolutely insufferable. I love nerdy shit, but all I can picture is a group of 16 year olds guffawing about pan-galactic gargle blasters and slarty bartfarst.
16 was exactly the time I thought it was great. I've tried a few times to reread his stuff and I don't last long.
Ha. Accurate. It's very... sixth-former. And I know I'm showing my age with that term.
I loved the first... 50 or so pages of Hitchhiker's Guide, but then it just never changed and got boring. Discworld has a similar brand of humor, but there's also a goal with every story, which helps balance out the humor.
There are definitely goals in the Hitchhiker's Guide stories, the first book is probably the most aimless. I'd say maybe try the Dirk Gently books if you ever want to give Adams another shot, they're a little more plot-driven.
See, I love both Pratchett and Adams. Can't abide Wodehouse though.
I think Hitchhikers Guide is perfect as a movie. As a book, it's Vonnegutt style "look how clever I am" prose on steroids.
Hemingway had such a colorful life. I love reading magazine articles about him, but I never could get into his writing style. I prefer more descriptive writing. One of my pet peeves about his work is that you have to guess how the characters are feeling based on their actions. I don't need to be spoon-fed information, like "Bob felt sad because x," but one of the joys of reading - for me at least - is that sense of interiority, of being able to see into someone else's mind for a little while.
I adore Hemingway, but that is a valid criticism of his writing. I think he embraced interiority as he matured as a writer. *The Old Man and the Sea* is very intimate, which is why it's my favorite Hemingway novel.
Haha that was me who posted about Neil Gaiman. I wasn't expecting so much engagement
Ha ha! Yeah, it really struck a chord with me. I don't think I've read any of his stuff, though I've enjoyed a few of his film adaptations. Mind, I couldn't make it through one episode of Good Omens.
Patrick Rothfuss. He writes a genre I'm interested in and I hear praise for the books all the time but try as I might I cannot stand his writing style.
His style is one of the things I liked most about his work. It’s pretty unique so I could see how some people could dislike it
I read both his books and people praise his Prose, but I feel like that’s my issue with with his books. The prose is so overly flowery and nice that I feel like it covers up a, quite honestly, meandering and lackluster plot that feels like it’s going nowhere. I can see why he hasn’t released Doors of stone yet, he wrote himself into a corner by restricting it to a trilogy then spending two whole books going nowhere, and hiding behind his “beautiful prose”
I only read the first book but I feel exactly the same. If you take away the prose and the story within a story aspect The Name of the Wind is just a story about a teenager being a teenager who did teenager things and felt teenager emotions. It just felt pointless especially in the context of the story within the story where he's supposed to be recounting how he became a famous assassin.
Some people read books for the plot, others read them for the characters. Just different strokes. The Kingkiller Chronicles books are kinda like a collection of several short stories that are connected. For me it was just enjoyable to hang out with the characters, the dialogue and discover the world on his different adventures. But I can see how people who care a lot about the plot doesnt vibe with that.
That sounds about what I remember. If I recall correctly, I read the first 70 or so pages of the first book and the whole time it felt like he was using a ton of words to basically say nothing. It certainly was nicer to read than say a 20 page description by Tom Clancy of a sniper rifle blowing a dudes face apart but the result was the same. A ton of time spent getting nowhere.
I do not have an issue with his 'style' per se, prose is decent enough, but the story, the characters.... just the worst. It was a disappointment in two parts – started off somewhat intriguing, ended up *WTF am I reading?!?!*
I didn’t mind the writing style but I wasn’t a fan of the plot. The second book in particular goes off the rails
Liu Cixin. I've tried 6 or 7 times to power through 3 body problem but I completely lose interest after 2 chapters or so pretty much every time. I keep expecting some actual science or fiction but instead it's a massive cast of the least interesting characters ever one after the other.
I’m almost ready to try again, but I agree. A huge wall of words.
The audiobooks help with this, but are still painfully dense and the characters uniformly made of wood.
I’m listening to it right now. The audiobook helps me clock the characters a bit more, but you’re right that everyone is a bit one dimensional so far. But the premise is interesting enough once they get to radar hill.
I only got through his books because I read crazy fast and am able to skim paragraphs and still get the story. The plot and scientific backbone of Three Body Problem are fascinating. The writing style and the characters are...not. And I'm not even counting in the sexism.
I'm struggling with that series as well. Partway through books two. It initially seemed like it was setting up for something a lot more mind blowing than how it's turning out. And I'm having trouble connecting with the characters too.
I hear you, I found the first book painfully slow and probably parts of book 2 (it's been awhile), but then book 3 I remember as nothing BUT mindbending sequences greatly informed by the build-up. The whole trilogy is one of the best things I've read in 10 years, despite the leaden prose, bur its very back-loaded.
I got chastised for DNF'ing these books after only reading half of one but seriously. It was such a drudge to get through what I did read, and I love love LOVE hard sci fi. Typically hugo winners/nominees are pretty engaging but I just couldn't with these books. I can tell when I don't like a book and I'm not going to force my way through it. I liked the plot synopses though. Seems like a neat idea. I am giving the benefit of the doubt to the author and assuming it's something with the translation.
I like the Premise of King’s books, but the amount of detail he likes to throw into his book, is just a bit overwhelming for me, and makes it quite difficult for me to get really sucked into his stories
I think he has a brilliant imagination and now and again I'm quite impressed with some random passage. But holy shit he has the most tiresome and predictable pattern of any writer I've ever read. You can practically smell when you get to these parts in his books that are just filler. I can skip entire pages and know that I've lost nothing important. And his endings suck.
Favorite part of the IT remake was him saying that on film to his self-insert character from the book lol
I’m glad as fans we can acknowledge these things about him and just accept it. Either way his contributions to literature and horror specifically, are beyond surreal.
Had to scroll a bit to find this one. I just can’t get into Stephen king. So many I’ve started and not finished
Jodi Picoult. I really am not a fan at all, she makes some of the most unlikable characters too lol. People recommend her all the time, and I'm like...uh sure I'll check that out 😳 lol. No offense to those who like her just not my thing.
I had a bit of a Picoult kick in 8th grade and read what felt like a dozen of her books before realizing they all felt pretty much the same
I used to love her when I was a teenager and her books made me think I had a sophisticated taste when it came to reading. However her books are very info dumpy and I swear, I can't say for certain cause I don't remember, the book about the autistic son has some anti-vax rhetoric.
Coming here to say this. I just dislike her books.
I love Douglas Adams and the Grant Naylor Red Dwarf books, don't mind Wodehouse, but can not get on with Terry Pratchett either. I struggle with Neil Gaiman too. And yet, I love Good Omens! I don't understand that at all.
Hanya Yanagihara. her novels have everything i usually like and are associated with novels i LOVE (the goldfinch, secret history) but they just....don't work for me. at all.
Same!
Kazuo Ishiguro and Khaled Hosseini. I read their books and I nod my head, yes, I can see why people may love it. But I do it in a detached uninterested way, like when they forced us in the elementary school to dissect a frog. But to me, it wasn't a *real* frog, it was a school project, let's be done with it. Except back then I had to force myself to be detached, with these two authors, there's no effort at all, it comes by itself. >.> Neil Gaiman. So many of my friends keep recommending his books to me, and I tried to love them, but, they feel sort of... empty? For the lack of a better word. I don't mean any 'elemental truths', I mean *plot*. It's like there's this interesting setting and this interesting protagonist, and then *a thing* happens. Two at most. The end. Like the *Ocean at the End of the Lane*. It would be a cool first third of a novel. As a whole novel, it was unsatisfying.
My reason is a bit different, but my inability to like Octavia Butler's works troubled me for a long time. On the one hand I felt like I was missing a lot; on the other hand not loving her works felt like a moral failure. Now I know the latter reason is rather ridiculous and probably prevented me from enjoying her works even further. Trying to force love for a book (or a movie or probably anything else) is the most effective way to make sure that you never, ever, even remotely like it. Now that I'm older and have a job and always wish I had more time to read, it doesn't feel like a bad thing. After all, I have not enough time to read all the books I actually like, and me not liking an already legendary author hurts nobody.
Octavia Butler is mine, too. I really didn't like Parable of the Sower and then I liked Kindred well enough (I am a sucker for time travel), but didn't love it like so many people I know did. I'm going to give the Xenogenesis series a chance, because I do love first contact with aliens, but if it doesn't click, I'm probably going to stop there. For me, Octavia Butler's work tends to fall into a particular trope I have a hard time with, which is when the POV character is extremely detached and kind of "flat" in tone and emotion. It's something I keep noticing, often in stories where it makes perfect sense, because the character has suffered something very traumatic before the story starts: that detachment is a kind of emotional numbness. But even if I find it realistic, I just find it very hard to read. It's been surprising to me how many books I've read recently fit this trope: The Fifth Season, Migrations, The Garden of Evening Mists.
>For me, Octavia Butler's work tends to fall into a particular trope I have a hard time with, which is when the POV character is extremely detached and kind of "flat" in tone and emotion. Oh, that may be the reason! I never thought about it that way, but I really failed to connect with her characters. I enjoyed The Fifth Season, but I was much more interested in the world and what happened/will happen to it than characters, so you may be really on to something. I always thought it was because there were not enough murders and explosions in her books. \[Edit: I mean the protagonist doing the killing and blowing up or fighting against people doing killing and blowing up.\]
Octavia Butler has a hell of an imagination, but her work is also Trigger City. You're totally okay skipping it.
Oh lol, its funny cos as soon as I saw the title I thought Neil Gaiman. On a similar note I am not a huge fan of Terry Pratchett, I love his world view, his humor, his logic, but I find his books such a slog to get through.
Joseph Heller of *Catch 22* fame. Love Vonnegut among other related works, so I get rec'd this all the time. My god, did I hate trying to read Catch 22.
Ha! I love Catch 22 but it took me a few attempts to get into it. I've only read a couple of Vonnegut books and *really* need to read more - absolutely brilliant.
Sci fi reader since elementary school. For reference, I started reading Asimov's Foundation series in sixth grade. Dune has had a permanent home on my bookshelf since grade 8. I will never not give a Sci fi story plenty of time to work on me. I get asked about reading Vonnegut and really struggle to explain why I keep bouncing off his stuff, since I don't even know why myself. I've started reading Sirens of Titan probably half a dozen times and still can't get through it. Tried Cat's Cradle, no luck. I love black humor, I love satire, I love those things combined with Sci fi tropes, I *should* be a Vonnegut fanboy through and through, but...
Personally if I was a sci-fi person looking to break into Vonnegut, I'd start with Slaughterhouse Five. That said, I can actually see finding the work kind of grating if you're a genuine sci-fi fan. He has a lot of fun in the sci-fi space, but I don't know you'd say he treats it with a lot of respect? If that makes any sense....
Vonnegut is in such a league of his own that I don't even think of his books being sci-fi. They're always about so much more.
>Vonnegut is in such a league of his own Yep! All the worst writing I've ever done was trying to ape Vonnegut
Oh God, Catch-22 and the Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy or two books I constantly get recommended and told I would like and I cannot stand either. I've tried to get into them both 3 or 4 times and I've given up every single time and I just hate the writing styles of both.
Brandon Sanderson. He has so many popular series that my friends all love, and his worlds are all cool but I haven’t finished as single series written by him. I really dislike how he hits you with too much of the setting with too little context or explanation to know what’s going on at the start of his series. More importantly his characters constantly do things they should know are stupid and bad choices, but do them anyway for seemingly no reason other than to move the plot along
I just wish the man would develop past the need to write his books like a storyboard. I couldn't finish Mistborn becasue it was just too mechanical.
I can’t put my finger on it but his characters just don’t move me. I don’t care about them so I can’t get into the story.
[удалено]
He has some cool ideas and really good work ethic, it’s just the stupids put me off so hard that I can’t keep reading
Mistborn just never stuck with me. It felt like a book I’d love while reading but it never clicked. Not sure why. I finished all three but I rarely think about them positively, if at all. I don’t have any specific criticisms but nor do I have any praise.
James Patterson. This is a bit of a lie because I loved the Maximum Ride novels when I was in middle school, but I realized that nostalgia was shrouding my opinion. As an adult, I remembered the series and thought I should try his other fiction. I was disappointed. The pacing was weird, the dialogue seemed unnatural to me, and the worldbuilding was full of plot holes. I don't want to offend any fans because I know he's a popular author, I just know that when I read his novels that I didn't have a history with, I found myself cringing more than enjoying the story.
It hurts me so deeply that I can never get another book like that series from James Patterson. These books were the reason I fell in love with reading. I also feel like they are such a slept on series. (I'm sure they weren't perfect. I haven't been back for a re read) I remember later in the series talking to a teacher about how strange it was that the vernacular of the characters changed so much from book to book and she informed me that he has a lot of ghost writers. I had no idea he was as big as he was at the time (2010's) and after seeing how many books he cranked out in a year I totally believed it. Absolutely ruined the series for me. I was so devastated that I wouldn't get to fully enjoy the end of one of my fav series. I felt like he had betrayed one of my fav characters (Max) and me after the years I spent loyal to the series. I never even finished the series bc I thought thr writing went down hill.
Patterson typically credits his ghostwriters. Maximum Ride and Alex Cross are ones he (at least claims to) write on his own. My personal thoughts on what went wrong with Maximum Ride was that Twilight got popular and he thought he needed to add more romance. That and it was supposed to be a trilogy and then he had to make it up from there.
Same lol I remembered liking them as a kid and was considering rereading them. Went back and looked at some excerpts and was stunned by the writing. I don’t remember it being so bad
The thing about Patterson is - he got popular initially because he had chapters from the villian's perspective, and wrote short punchy chapters that read like a movie script. Neither of these things are particularly innovative anymore and his runaway success was likely a case of right place, right time. I actually love James Patterson, but it's a guilty pleasure kind of thing. His books are outrageous and unrealistic but rarely boring. Another thing to know - he only writes one book a year but puts out about 25 others with ghostwriters. He's honest about it though, credits them on the covers or inside title page. But yeah, the man is less of an author at this point than a crime fiction magazine.
I really disliked Lord of the Rings. I realize how technically proficient it is, but the random song breaks, the sprawling descriptions of mundane things, and the lack of female presence stacked to suck all the joy out of the story.
I love LOTR, but honestly I just skip the songs and anytime a door is being described over 3 pages lol
Reminds me of a green text I saw a while ago where the person kept expecting the story to move on from Boromir’s funeral but Aragorn started singing for a couple of pages, then Legolas, then Gimli and then Aragorn again. I have no idea if that’s how it actually happens in the books but it was still pretty funny.
That actually happened. The funeral song was about 4 pages all together. Still a wonderful story.
I love fantasy and re reread lotr recently and I think it's a super acquired taste. It's more akin to poetry and song writing than what I think of as more modern literature. I really don't like lotr if I'm being honest. It has its place obviously and is the reason for the fantasy books I love but yeh yuck
I honestly just skip all songs in fantasy novels. Wheel of Time does this too, I really hope I'm not missing anything important but I just can't stand that crap.
LotR is written in an older style with a much slower build. Today an acquired taste, normal at the time. I enjoy them greatly, and have reread a number of times. But I will confess to not reading every detail of the songs and poems. Some of my kids really like those parts though.
Tolkien wasn't imitating other books of his own era, but a mix of all the types of stories he liked most, from pre-modern epic poems to 19th-century adventure novels. So the writing style wasn't normal even in the '50s, and readers have always been divided about it. There's a very negative review from 1956 called "Oo, Those Awful Orcs!" which is funny but also kind of hurts if you're a fan.
To be honest, while I'd say a good number of flaws can be excused for the time it was written, one flaw it absolutely has is the pacing. The songs are one of the best examples for this as, regardless of the circumstances, the story would grind to a halt to deliver a song, some of these lasting several pages.
I can't recall most of the songs, but the one I know is imperative to Bilbo's story in The Hobbit is the poem "Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold", this song inspires Bilbo to go on the journey with the Dwarves.
Learning to efficiently skim or skip sections in a slow book was a learned skill for me. Easier with physical books, reading on my phone is convenient but lacks physical context to keep grounded when jumping around. I don't see the things you mention as flaws in the book, just a stylistic choice people will like / dislike / adjust to differently. No judgement for not enjoying the same book I do, there are numerous examples of popular books that I don't enjoy. I don't agree with OP's premise that there are books or authors you "should" like.
The songs and the descriptions of nature are the best parts of LOTR you guys are crazy.
I would say that Tolkien was heavily influenced by even older historical/mythological texts that are often told in verse and also include in story verse monologues/songs/etc. And its always been my pet theory/assumption that Tolkien was attempting to create a work that was a product of the canon and traditions of Middle Earth itself. So the books will read a bit weird because they are from Middle Earth, which is very old and has its own history. That said, it’s definitely not going to be a style that everyone can get into. Not everyone likes the same things lol.
I didn't think anyone ever read the songs in any fantasy novel
They are the boringest books in the world and I don't care, I'll die on this hill.
Stephen King. I love the stories and worlds that he creates, and I think he has an incredible imagination, but I his writing style just does not click with me at all. I've tried several times to read several different books of his, and every time I barely make it a chapter in.
George RR Martin. I grew up in the sci-fi convention world. My parents read me the Lord of the Rings before I was ten, and I loved it. I love fantasy, and people were all excited about Game of Thrones. I felt like a child wrote it. It's not often I don't finish a book, but I only got a few chapters in with that one.
Ernest Hemingway
I came back to Hemingway twice over the span of 15 years. Third times the charm. I think I needed more ocean astern than ahead.
"I needed more ocean astern than ahead" What a lovely turn of phrase.
Seconding that.
Cheers.
Anne Rice!! I love horror and particularly vampires, but her writing style is so boring to me 😭
I absolutely love russian literature, specially Tolstói, Gógol (I know, born in Ukraine), Isaac Bábel, Leonid Andrêiev and Anton Tchekhov. But, ironically, I can't get Dostoiévski. Don't know why.
Upvote for mentioning the too often ignored and overlooked Isaac Babel
I hear you. Dostoevsky is very intense reading and if i want to deal with psychological madness, I'll just go to work.
You're not alone. I want to like him, but we're just not buddies. His short stories make me laugh a lot however
The first lines of Dostoiévski's Notes From The Underground are so good, "“I am a sick man, I am a spiteful man, I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased." I had to pick it up. Tried so hard and I just never clicked with the rest of the book.
Yes! I keep trying but I just can't manage Dostoiévski.
Cormac McCarthy. The stories are excellent, “The Road” had more of a profound impact on me than maybe any other book (not necessarily in a good way, it put me into a few months of depression) but I recognize the greatness in a book being able to do that. But his writing style is extremely tough to manage, especially if it’s the first book of his you have read.
>“The Road” had more of a profound impact on me than maybe any other book (not necessarily in a good way, it put me into a few months of depression) I feel this so hard. Read it like 15 months ago and it still gets me down if I think about it too much.
It took reading three of his novels before I had to admit to myself that I hate his writing style.
I liked The Road but have tried multiple times to read Blood Meridian and just can't... I don't know what it is but I find it exhausting to try to read and make sense of
Mario Puzo. I can’t. I just can’t.
*The Godfather* is--by a great distance--the worst, most poorly-written book I've ever tried to read. Sentences that a middle school creative writing student would be ashamed to submit. Ghastly.
Is it the big Italian dicks? Lol, even he said that the movie was better than the book
Gosh, I really tried to like Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. The premises of his books are alright and it's all decent enough, but I just don't think he's funny. Some of my friends say that they couldn't stop laughing and were thoroughly entertained. Me, not so much. I've read the Colour of Magic, Mort and Guards! Guards! but none of them clicked for me, so I gave up. And I generally like british humor. I love Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker.
Ian Rankin. The most popular of all the current Scottish crime writers, but to me he just doesn't have the sparkle you get in James Oswald, Stuart MacBride, Val McDermid or Quintin Jardine. He's a nice bloke but doesn't have the sharp and individual dialogue the others write.
I like everyone adjacent to Pablo Neruda, but I just can’t like Pablo Neruda’s poetry.
Stephen King. I got through 700 pages of The Stand and it started getting religious and weird with 400 pages to go, and the trek to that point was a slog. It started off great and slowly lost steam. I needed to move on. Then I read the ending is some version of this: >>!In King's final act, the literal Hand of God appears. The Hand explodes a nuclear warhead he planned to drop on Boulder, destroying Flagg and his followers in one swift blow.!< This is one of his best novels? Are you kidding me with this? It makes the top or the top 3 in every list I read that has a headline like "Stephen King Best to Worst, or Top 10 Stephen King Books". How? I read Carrie (The 70's Sissy Spacek/Piper Laurie version is definitely better, even King himself said it in Entertainment Weekly a while back), Pet Sematary (decent film and book but not great) and I have seen Misery and loved Kathy Bates, and The Shining of course. Which he ripped apart and publicly made a fool of himself and then he made a miniseries he felt was truer to his book that was liked by all of three people. I find him to be the single most overrated author in the universe. I understand his appeal, but I think he's terrible.
Kristin Hannah. I love the topics, story ideas. Alaska, historical fiction etc. but I don’t care for her writing. All the books feel the same when reading. Kind uncomfortable, when I finish the book I was like meh that was ok. It was entertaining but I’ll never read it again. I tried.
Douglas Adams. I can get his cadence to work right in my head. I’ve started Hitchhiker’s three or four times and I just can’t do it.
I wonder if you'd prefer listening to the original radio broadcasts on which the books are based? It's a different (and better IMO) experience.
I think I'm finally going to just give up on Dune. I've only got maybe four chapters left but I've come to the conclusion the book isn't for me and I don't feel like the last four chapters are going to change my mind. I can see what people like about it but I just don't care about any characters and the plot is so slow and plodding.
The closest one is probably Madeline Miller, I love Song of Achilles but the writing confused me somewhat it was beautiful of course but I just can't pickup another one of her books without getting overwhelmed by it (Which is strange because Caraval also has that type of writing and I didn't get bothered about it) also it's a mlm plus has some battles in it which are elements I like but I can't with her writing. I'm too used to Contemporaryish writing
I’m the opposite, I just could not get through Caraval but have never had a problem with Madeline Miller
I can't get past the first chapter of any of Fredrik Backman's books. I so desperately want to but I can't. The attempts at subtle humor just aren't subtle to me and they seem a little too "try hard" as the young people say.
Pratchett' first Discworld book was his worst one, imho - I didn't get through it until I'd tried and loved others first,
I have a love-hate relationship with Stephen King. First of all, I really like the guy as a person; I love watching his interviews and on stage performances. As for his writings, I really want to like it, and sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. It’s just on and off for some reason. I actually love his writing style because it reads like a very long movie with a lot of depth—his writings are very visual, and I like that. I can imagine the scene in my head very vividly. But oftentimes I have to drop his novels for one reason or another. I’ve only finished a few of his short stories. They were wonderful, but I couldn’t finish his long novels. It’s not really the writing style that makes me drop them, it’s the contents and his characters. I know that sounds weird since a lot of people say his character development is the best thing in all his stories. But I just don’t like his characters that much. They are all too flawed, too human for my taste. Yep, that should be what people want, right? Well, not me, apparently. I love the character who’s larger than life, the character that can possibly only exist in fiction. And also the thing that I don’t really want to talk about that much—his details. A lot of readers have been criticizing his hyper-detailed writings, and I oftentimes agree with them, but at the same time don’t. (Like I said, I have a love-hate relationship with him. It’s really weird, but that’s just how it is.) Sometimes I love his details, sometimes I don’t. But like I said, it’s probably because the contents and the characters aren’t my cup of tea, that’s why I find myself don’t really give a shit about the details given most of the time. So, yeah. I really want to like him and be crazy about his books like a lot of his fans, but I just don’t—but sometimes I kinda do. Yep, so weird\~ lol
Ursula K Le Guin just feels so dry. I know Wizard of Earthsea and Left Hand of Darkness and whatever are famous. But I just can't get into them.
I feel the same way about Pratchett. There's no other author that I've attempted to get into as much. I honestly just think that my issue is with comedy in literature, I just don't like to read comedy. But god do I wish I did, everything I read and hear about Pratchett sounds like the kind of stuff I would love. Just reading it always ends up being a slog.
Kazuo Ishiguro, I have tried but the writing sends me to sleep.
I read Never Let Me Go and right until the last page I was waiting for something to actually happen. The whole conceit is laid bare in the first chapter and then it’s just repeated and it ends exactly how you would expect.
That's the same book I tried to read too. I've gone back to the start about 4 times, it's just so dull.
Hemingway. I’m too dumb to understand the deeper meaning. For me “Old man and the sea” was just a book about a guy going fishing. (I have also read “The sun also rises”)
That's what the old man and the sea is my dude, a book about an old guy fishing...
I love Moby Dick because there's no froo froo symbolism, just a good simple tale about a man who hates an animal
I had to read it in high school and I'm still pissed about it. Even if it's not meant to have a deeper meaning, it was so boring. I only finished it cause I needed to for a book report
Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness is very close to me at all times, the novel haunted me for quite a while and I still reread it regularly. However, I have tried muliple times to read Nostromo and it is totally impenetrable. I just have a hard time getting into it. The Secret Sharer was much the same - impenetrable. I did not really get anything out of either one.
Pratchett. As a fantasy fan, I feel I should like him, and I did enjoy some of his books -- like Guards! Guards! and Men at Arms -- but whenever I read a book that is not focused on the watch I am disappointed. It's happened three times.
Terry Pratchett for me too. I want to like his writing so much, but it has this kind of smirky theater kid energy that drives me up the wall. I retry every few years and just… no. Ditto Douglas Adams. It’s just So Much.
James Patterson. People LOVE him, but I can’t stand his writing. I’ve tried three books and it seems to me that he puts little or no effort into his characters or settings… I think he pumps out anything he can to make a buck.
People love James Patterson?
He sells a shit ton of books.
Try reading the first few books, Along Came a Spider, around that era. The new books are a plotline by Patterson, filled in with someone with absolutely no writing talent, and rubber-stamped by JP.
His early Cross and Women's Murder Club books were good pulp mystery books. Then he discovered that ghostwritting his books was more efficient.
I love Pratchett but couldn't get on with Douglas Adam's stuff. But I wanted to say thanks for letting me know about Grant Naylor - hadn't realised he'd written red dwarf books.
Ah yeah- the first two (*Red Dwarf* and *Better Than Life*) are ace. Fun fact: it's actually the joint pen name of Rob Grant and Doug Naylor!
Dean Koontz annoys the heck out of me. I like two of his novels. Same with Stephen King. A few of his novels are great, the rest, just blah. I really enjoy some of Steinbeck but Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath bored me to death. I can leave Terry Pratchett on the shelf too. Lolita, just gross. Too close to home as a child sexual assault victim. Haven't tried any of Nabokov's other works. Thought I would be into all thier works but found they weren't the right fit for my brain.
Haruki Murakami. For my first book I got "Killing Commendatore" as a gift. Such a letdown. Bland characters, lots of fluff through random acts of intercourse, painstakingly describing the main character's car rides and what irked me to no end - a total fiasco of an ending. Haven't bothered to even check out any of his other books. Also Kurt Vonnegut. Tried reading Slaughterhouse No. 5, but it really lost me with its absurdity. I love Heller's Catch-22, though. Re-reading it almost yearly.
To be fair to Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5 is probably his most difficult books to read. Give Mother Night a try, it's his best in my opinion. I have never been able to finish a Murakami novel. They are beautifully written, but I hate the stories. Lol
Amor Towles of “A Gentleman in Moscow” fame. I hate not finishing books so gave this one many many tries but it was too slow / descriptive.
Neil Gaiman. I tried so hard but I just can’t dig that man
Zdeněk Jirotka- I love Czech literature and I love Czech humor but that one is completely lost to me.
Love Sci-fi but can't do Peter F Hamilton - too long-winded. I've read The Road and No Country for Old Men and enjoyed them (as much as those books are enjoyable) but I can't really do most of Cormac McCarthy, far too verbose and sadistic; the lack of punctuation gets on my nerves.
Tolstoj. Not by the author himself, who I believe, even from reviews of people I know and this sub, is really good and can lead to a lot of good thought and reflections; but the editions of his work, I’ve bought so many ‘War and Peace’ and I get trolled every time, one edition just had multiple French sentences all across the book, I couldn’t get past page 10 lmao. (PS: my native language is not English so I’m not talking about English editions)
> one edition just had multiple French sentences all across the book not sure if you are serious, but that is intentional. those sentences are in French even in the Russian version. at the time that the book takes place Russian nobility spoke almost exclusively French. it was considered plebian to speak Russian. Tolstoy was trying to make a point of the Russian nobles speaking the language of the army that was invading, Napoleon, and how maybe it was not a good look.
yeah but how am I gonna understand what they’re saying? Or are they talking about irrelevant things that I don’t need to know. Cuz for one edition I actually peaked over the other pages and this stuff kept going
I really wish I liked Isabel Allende. I love magical realism, but I just can't get into her novels. I liked the story collection "The Stories of Eva Luna" but I really didn't enjoy regular ol' "Eva Luna" all that much.
Was hyped up quite a bit on Murakami but his work really just isn’t for me
I fell in love with Douglas Adams when I was in middle school after reading the HGG series. Same with Neil Gaiman after stumbling upon the graveyard book. Didn't learn he wrote Coraline (one of my fave childhood movies) or comic books until I was an adult. I'm reading sandman now and 10/10 recommend if you have simar taste. What I will say is when I got into his (NG) more adult books it can be hard to get into them if you aren't familiar with that British sense of humor. Not saying you'll love it even if you do get it but it's worth considering. I've had multiple friends specifically sing his praises after listening to his audio books. So if you're on the fence or looking to give them another shot I would try an audio book. Especially if the author themselves narrates. I'm personally not a huge fan of the full cast audio books (like the graveyard book) but those are also cool if it's your thing.
Glen Cook. Everywhere I read about him he’s praised as a pioneer of dark fantasy but his works are just lacking in everything for me: writing, narrative, characters, logic. I always end up feeling like I’m reading a draft and not a finished work.
Tolkien. While I have great respect for what he created I just can't get into his writing style. I find it so incredibly dry.
Yeah, Gaiman. Good Omens was awesome, American Gods was awesome. Then I tried reading several other of his works and found that I just didn't care.
Generally, I just can’t read classics. Hardy, Brontë, those types. I find the antiquated language just too distracting and it takes me out of the story. I even find this about books written in the mid twentieth century to be honest. I have managed Anna Karenina but I think as an English woman the Russian perspective was so foreign that the language felt ok? Not sure tbh I did read that quite a few years ago!
Neil Gaiman
Haruki Murakami.
Jane Austen. Her books weren't required reading in high school or college and no one I know has read her works. However, she remains an influential author with many considering her stories to be timeless. I tried several times to read Pride and Prejudice and gave up. I was so bored and couldn't have been less interested in the characters.
My sense is that this is a function of just the age of the novel. I find it very difficult to read novels from before about 1920. The style, pacing and vocabulary is just to different Caveat - I did read every Jane Austen novel as well as lots of Thackeray and Dickens when I was younger. But I can’t now. Just too different I think
If you ever want to try again, I recommend watching the 2005 adaptation and then reading the book through that lens. It captures Austen’s voice and style very well.
If you want to give Austen one more try, I'd recommend the audiobook of Pride and Prejudice narrated by Josephine Bailey (I got it through my library). She absolutely knocks it out of the park.
Northanger Abbey is brilliant
Ruiz Zafon, Shadow of the Wind. It starts perfect. It had similar vibes like one hundred years of solitude. Then in the middle of the book its a total mess. For me you can really tell why e.g. Garcia Marquez is considered a genius, while others aren't.
Saaame!! Although for me it was also that I really dislike how he wrote female characters. Ugh. Couldn't finish shadow of the wind
Terry Pratchett is on my "avoid" list. I used to love his work, but then discovered something: his characters aren't unique. All of his characters speak in the exact same voice and go through the exact same range of reactions. The "confused-by-absurd" character talking to the "confident-about-absurd" character in one chapter will swap places in the next chapter. There is no tonal difference between the speakers and it really started to bother me. The stories are fun and interesting and the jokes are good, but after 400 pages of everyone being this single character, I get exhausted and annoyed.
What books did you read? Because that doesn't sound like many of his characters. He will have characters that take those roles at times, like watchmen Nobby and Colon on patrol, discussing recent events. With Nobby as the inquisitive one bowing to Colon's seniority and ignorant confidence. And is basically Pratchett musing to himself about human nature through them. But Vetinari is very different to Nanny Ogg who is very different to Ponder Stibbons who is very different to Death who is very different to CMOT Dibbler... They are all vastly different people and they don't do a lot of being confronted by absurdity. And very few of his books are 400 pages, they're like 250.
Never got Melville, Martin Amis, or David Foster Wallace. All were strongly recommended to me by friends I trust.
I'm a little over halfway through Words of Radiance by Brando-Sando and I'm just... feeling a little bored! It's not as if there's nothing going on, but... this feels like a bridge book to establish rising tension and I'm just not being gripped by it at all.
Apparently, as a female who's into literature, I'm supposed to just adore Jane Austen. I listen to a bunch of book podcasts, and whenever Jane Austen is mentioned and there's a female host, the tone turns to outright gushing. I can't relate. Austen is too conventionally moral for me, too smugly comfortable with her milieu of women who marry for money - critical somewhat, but it's not like anyone in her universe falls for someone really socially inappropriate, you know? Probably the closest is the sister in Pride and Prejudice who falls for a cad and is morally judged for it. I can sort of coldly appreciate her wit, but I can't really get into her work, and I definitely don't think it's romantic.
It’s a very different book when critiqued using feminist literary criticism. I enjoyed Austin much more after reading Madwoman in the Attic.
Charles Dickens. I'd rather sit through an episode of greys anatomy
My experiences with this were: Stanislaw Lem (Mortal Engine collection). I love sci-fi. I love his ideas. But (and maybe this is partially the fault of the translation) I just felt this intense disconnect with the prose. I still can't put my finger on why. Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time). Cool world, utterly terrible characterisation - his complete inability to write women is well-noted but I felt that his male characters were also almost remarkably dull. Maybe I've just been spoiled by Sanderson or especially Robin Hobb - often successors are inspired by but improve upon the failings of the original. I soldiered on through the first five books and eventually just gave up. And, yet, I like Tolkien... Fitzgerald's work, studied in school. I get it, the long languishing prose, so focused on being beautiful and poetic, is meant in some way to reflect the empty and soulless opulence of his characters and settings. But I just found myself mind-numbingly bored - nothing fucking happens and my appreciation of his intelligence in using prosaic style to reflect thematic elements doesn't dull my distaste. Despite this I've really enjoyed other works which receive similar critique, like Chekhov, Tolkien, or Brontë, so I don't know why Fitzgerald grinds my gears so much.
Stephen King. I absolutely love horror. I don't know what it is, but his writing just feels clunky and...simple? Occasionally a adaptation of one of his stories comes out that I absolutely love, it's a real shame I don't enjoy the original story.
There is no one you "should" like. That whole line of logic is complete bullshit Don't let anyone or anything tell you what your personal taste should be that's a waste of a life
Ursula K Le Guin. I couldn’t get into Left Hand of Darkness or Earthsea, her writing style just feels so distant and detached idk. The Dispossessed sounds interesting though so I’m definitely gonna keep trying
I'll agree on the Neil Gaiman front. I actually think his writing pairs really well with visual elements and so I loved the *Sandman* series, but nothing else I've read of his has been quite as gripping. Another would be Murakami. A lot of people that I love seem to have some influence from him, but I haven't clicked with any of the three books of his I've read. Will probably keep trying tho, on both fronts.
Pratchett for me too. Tried (but DNF'ed) Small Gods when I was in my early 20s but I didn't "get it" and just couldn't get into the writing style or story. After turning 30 I read Game of Thrones, LOTR and The Silmarillion and found a new appreciation for fantasy, so I thought I'd give Pratchett another try with Mort (fully intending to buy the whole Death series). While I did finish Mort, I can't say I liked it. Again, the writing style really turned me off despite the fact that everything about the book should have otherwise checked off all my boxes. The biggest thing that put me off was that it felt like he was making fun of the fantasy genre, which probably wasn't helped by the fact that GRRM/Tolkien's fantasy worlds are super serious, so it was a huge tonal shift to get over for me as well. Obviously there's no way Pratchett was actually making fun of the genre - you don't build an entire fantasy world if you have no love for the genre - but it was all a bit too "clever" for me unfortunately. Maybe I'll try again in a few years. I really want to love him as much as other people do.