August 2025
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    It’s always hard for me to find books that I really like — as opposed to just, “eh, it was okay” or “mostly good, but I really didn’t like ending,” or “I’m mad at myself that I wasted time reading that.”

    Part of the reason is that **I don’t really have a clear genre or description of what I like**, like people who say, “I love cozy mysteries!” and then happily devour tons of them.

    ​

    **Here are some books that I’ve read over the years and really, truly liked**, enough that I could at least imagine reading them a second time (a few of them I already have):

    * *Circle of Friends* by Maeve Binchy (and her other ***early*** books only)
    * *Gone With the Wind* by Margaret Mitchell
    * *To Kill a Mockingbird* by Harper Lee
    * *A Tree Grows in Brooklyn* by Betty Smith
    * *Catcher in the Rye* by JD Salinger (and, to a lesser extent, his other books)
    * *Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated* by Allison Arngrim
    * *Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed* by Lori Gotlieb
    * Books by Liane Moriarty (although there is always at least one thing in each of them that bugs me, I enjoy her writing style and characters enough to forgive it)
    * Jen Lancaster’s first 3 books
    * Non-fiction books by Dave Barry (dated, but they still make me laugh a lot)
    * *The Help* by Kathryn Stockett
    * *You’ll Grow Out of It* by Jessi Klein
    * *Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine* by Gail Honeyman
    * Books by Sophie Kinsella (although I have to be in the right mood, and I’ve hated any other chick lit I’ve tried)
    * *Nobody’s Fool* by Richard Russo
    * *How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life* by Scott Adams
    * *Watership Down* by Richard Adams (I read this decades ago and don’t really remember it, but I remember that I liked it)
    * *Rebecca* by Daphne Du Marier (same as above)

    ​

    **Books that I’m Mad at Myself for Reading:**

    * *You Need to Know* by Nicola Moriarty
    * *The Wrong Family* by Tarryn Fischer
    * *Little Fires Everywhere* by Celeste Ng
    * *Into the Darkest Corner* by Elizabeth Haynes
    * *Outlander* by Diana Gabaldon

    ​

    Any thoughts or recommendations based on my “profile”? Thanks!

    by ApprehensiveLink6591

    5 Comments

    1. BoredConfusedPanda on

      have a look at your list and try and figure out why/what you liked or disliked in each book. for instance, does one book have really unique similies and metaphores, does _____ chapter suck because the author included unncessary detail, do you enjoy books with a smaller cast of characters, does a book have a really good mythology setup, do you like how the names of characters in a specific book sound, do you like books where you related to at least one of the characters, do you like longer or shorter books? etc.

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