Hello. This is my first time in this sub but I just recently started reading again. I’ve been chronically ill for more than a year now but only recently able to read when my brain fog lessened. I read the new Hunger Games book Sunrise on the Reaping about a month ago, then the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes also for the first time. I was going to reread the HG series but I’m craving new information. I want to read books new to me. I started reading You after I watched the new season of the show. I’m currently reading You and Bridget Jones’s Diary (my favorite movie and palate cleanser from the dark themes of You). I’m not sure if I like You (I’m halfway through) because of how crude it is but I’m still reading it so it must be interesting to me.
In the past I loved the Trumpet of the Swan, Black Beauty, Warriors: Into the Wild, Twilight, Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Artemis Fowl, Eragon, etc. mostly books about animals and fantasy. Most recently I read the Hobbit, LOTR and the first two Bridgerton books after the second season came out. I’m not into reading smut and Bridgerton was not my favorite – I fell in love with Anthony and Kate (like everyone else). I did like the Duke and I but I don’t want suggestions based on those books because I prefer my books without explicit sex. But I’m also not looking for ACOTAR or Fourth Wing or whatever everyone is reading right now. I’m looking for something more intellectual but still easy to read because I do still have brain fog and a hard time concentrating. But I have all the time in the world and I’m depressed and I want to think about something other than my life.
Please and thank you! This is probably too long but I’m really curious to hear suggestions with all the context. I’m open to reading anything that interests me but the thing is I don’t know what interests me because I’ve lived a relatively sheltered and intentionally filtered life… oh, and I tried reading A Tale of Two Cities in high school and it was the only book I couldn’t read and pretended I read in school. Charles Dickens is not welcome here
by Fearless_swiftie
5 Comments
The Last by Hanna Jameson
The Wall by Marlen Haushofer
Black Tide by K.C. Jones
Quite sure you’d like these based on the titles you mention.
The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden might work for you – fantasy with zero smut and light romance. Lyrical, but not overly complicated prose. It’s also the first in a trilogy.
VE Schwab and Naomi Novik are two other fantasy authors to check out. Novik’s Scholomance series is dark academia fantasy with a romance sub plot, but is more mature than Harry Potter. And Schwab’s Vicious is about two roommates with (self-created) superpowers turned archenemies. But you really can’t go wrong with any book by either author.
Editing to add: Into Thin Air by Krakauer, if you want to dabble in some more nonfiction, since you enjoyed Into The Wild by him. It’s gripping, reads like a thriller.
The Scholomance series by Naomi Novik starting with A Deadly Education
Imagine Hogwarts as a horror setting with the danger and the in-universe politics taken seriously.
How about [A Tree Grows in Brooklyn](https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/dc5de2f5-b132-4c4c-8e49-8bf46005d5da) by Betty Smith?
If you like animals and fantasy try The Amber Owl by Juliet Marillier.