What’s something that you feel like you should like, but for some reason can’t get into, no matter how many chances you give it?
For me, it’s The Three Body Problem. It should be right up my alley from everything I’ve heard about it (especially the second book, which looks at the Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter!), but for the life of me, I can’t get past the first chapter at all. I even tried reading it in another language to see if it was the translation that kept me from getting into it, and nope.
Hopefully I won’t get crucified for this take, but Dune. I love the Barsoom series, I love Tremors, but Dune did nothing for me. I tried reading it near the end of spring semester in high school, which is arguably a bad time as I was dealing with track semi-final/finals as well as school finals, and after a month of reading less than a page a day, I gave it back to the friend who loaned it to me. That was 12 years ago, though so maybe I should give it another shot.
I tried it on audiobook and couldn’t finish it. It didn’t help that it was one of the ones with 500 different readers for different characters (and very distinctive voices like Scott Brick were different characters in the second book or part or whatever than the first), but while the world was kind of interesting, I really couldn’t be grabbed by the story at all.
And I finish almost everything. Especially on audiobook.
I like Dune a lot, but you definitely have to have a certain mindset to get into it. Barsoom and Tremors are really…I don’t want to say “not the same genre”…but kinda “not the same genre”?
Dune is NOT an action/adventure book. It has the trappings of one, but you’re more likely to get into it if you love anthropology, religious studies, sociology, and philosophy.
Barsoom is pulp sci-fi (which is fine–there’s a reason pulps are popular!), and Tremors likewise isn’t in the same wheelhouse as Dune either. That’s not to say those two can’t have aspects of anthropology/religious studies/sociology, etc. as a lot of SFF mixes it up, but Dune is pretty heavy on the intellectual/academic side of things. It is taking theoretical concepts and putting them into motion on a stage via the characters. It’s a very measured book that plays out high level concepts with pawns on a stage.
When I think of “books like Dune” I tend to think more of Ursula K. LeGuin or Octavia Butler, in that they start out with a philosophy, and then the characters are set on a stage to play out those philosophical/sociological/etc. musings for the reader.