i mostly just love very heavily character driven stories so the actual contents of the plot kind of matter a little bit less to me than the quality of the characters and their development. i really like to come away from reading a book feeling like i’ve spent so much time in the narrator’s head that i have to take a while to reorient myself to my own reality. also it always earns lots of bonus points from me when there’s an element of absurdity to the world being explored and/or its characters. i think it’s so fascinating to read about comically awful or strange people and things when they’re written in a way that manages to feel real and impactful
some things that i’ve been reading recently and enjoying are (if it helps, i know most of these are loosely connected at best):
the first bad man by miranda july
we need to talk about kevin by lionel shriver
no one is talking about this by patricia lockwood
the stranger by albert camus
cat’s cradle by kurt vonnegut
the old man and the sea + the sun also rises by ernest hemingway
the vampire chronicles by anne rice
the island of dr moreau by hg wells
the festival of insignificance by milan kundera
nightbitch by rachel yoder
by Practical_Range_6235