I, 35M, have never been much into reading. I just never found that one book that I thought was fantastic. Everything felt OK at best.

How can I ask you for advice when I don’t even know what I like myself? I don’t know. I think a fantasy or mythological theme would work best. Something fast paced and with a non sad ending. I’m open to pretty much everything, though.

Maybe by listing what books I have read and what I found displeasing about them you can suggest me a book or two to try? Give me some feedback!

Books I remember reading:

  • Circe - I like the mythological theme, I think this was the book I enjoyed the most. I found it a bit bland, like the story pretty much lead to nothing of interest.

  • The Hobbit - I love the lord of the rings movies (never tried the books), I thought maybe I’d enjoy this book. I didn’t enjoy the plot, don’t really wanna spoil why.

  • Da Vinci Code - I thought it was fine, I guess I enjoy plots with some mystery.

  • Angels and Demons - honestly felt like the same book, I don’t know if I even finished it

  • Digital Fortress - as a software developer, i thought the theme would pull me in but it didn’t. It actually felt like the same book again and I have tried reading it three times without success.

  • 100 years of solitude - I read this a long time ago so I don’t really remember why I didn’t enjoy it. I remember it being a slog with long and very detailed descriptions of situations that didn’t feel to matter at all.

Thanks!

  • @ProudPlatypus
    2•1 year ago

    You could try some novellas, something a bit faster passed might help out. For example there’s the Murderbot Diaries.

    I had fun recently reading the first 5 books in the ‘Book of Amber’ series by Roger Zelazny, published through the 70’s-80’s. Each book is also on the shorter side, and the first 5 books are a contained story. The rest of the series follows a different character after. The magic and world hopping I found pretty interesting, a bit different, and the family drama is entertaining.

    ‘Pod’ by Laline Paull. Multi perspective story, follows a hand full of different sea creatures. Quite a heavy story, It’s a dramatization about the effects humanity has had on the ocean, and has a lot of other themes tied in to. It’s just really well written, great characters, <\3.

    You could also try some murder mysteries, Agatha Christie stories are still like for good reason. They are fun reads and there’s a lot of them if you do end up liking them. ‘And Then There Were None’, and ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’, or for the Miss Marple stories ‘A Murder is Announced’. Though of course racism will just pop in sometimes. There’s also more current series in this genre being published but I don’t have enough experience with them to make any recommendations.

    There’s the Books of Earthsea, they read more along the lines of a fairytail. My favourite of them at the moment is ‘The Tombs Of Atuan’.