I used to be a voracious reader back when I was a kid, the kind to always have a book with her from second grade to graduation. By the time i hit 18 I had two bookshelves, and a few piles on the floor awaiting a third shelf that never came because I kinda just… stopped reading. I mean, I didn't stop reading, I finished off whatever YA series I was into at the time and got the occasional new YA book from authors I enjoyed in the past, but they never quite hit the same.
Turns out it’s hard to relate to petty high-school drama when you’re an adult with adult problems, and so I tried to start reading adult books. The problem there is that everything was so fucking boring. Why the fuck does every adult book go so sloooooow. I know I have ADHD but come on, stop describing how a slice of bacon curls up when it fries in the pan and get to character interactions and/or plot. I don’t need to hear the musings of the main character on every interaction they have with someone, no one muses that much.
So I stopped reading. And every couple months or so, for the last decade, I’ve tried to find something to read and yet every book fell flat. Well except for when my wife got me to read her favourite YA series from when she was a kid, Skulduggery Pleasant, but that’s YA. Its breaking my heart. I used to love reading, it was my main hobby, but it really feels like they just don’t make books for me. Problem is, I don’t even know what I want out of a story. All I can think of are the things that make me DNF. Hopefully listing them, and the books I liked as a kid can give y’all some ideas about what I would enjoy as an adult.
Things I dislike:
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Hard Fantasy or SciFi – I want the books i read to be in the modern world. Sure, they might have magic, or like weird tech or whatever, but that’s grounded by taking place on earth in current times. If it has to be in a fantasy world, It needs to be as a setting, and not the sort of thing that requires me learning a map and calendar system.
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Sex – I'm not a prude, I'm just asexual and find that banging is maybe the least intimate thing two people can do together. Love romance subplots tho, so if those are involved that’s a plus.
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The End of The World – It was played out a decade ago and its not getting any fresher.
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“Authority is Good Actually” stories – This is mostly about Rivers of London. ACAB includes magical police. For that matter if the book you want to suggest involves creatures like vampires/werewolves/etc being inherently evil and those who hunt them as the good guys, save it.
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Books about how sad/hard/awful it is to be queer – I’m queer, I love seeing other queer people in stuff, but when they only exist to suffer it becomes insufferable. I’m fine if bigots are in the story but books about how hard and terrible it is being queer are a hard no. Being queer is awesome tbh.
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Kids – I’m an adult without kids, and want to read about adults who don’t have kids.
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Superheros – See point 3.
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Anything by a Mormon, Zionist, or Green brother – this is mostly to catch the Hank Green and Brandon Sanderson recs, but y’know, also the genocide apologists.
EDIT:
- No Short story collections, poems, etc. – I want a novel length (or longer) narrative to get lost in.
Books and Media I have enjoyed:
- By Darren Shan: The Cirque Du Freak series, The Demonata Series, Procession of the dead
- By Neal Shusterman: The Unwind Series, The Antsy Bonano series
- By Rick Riordan: Percy Jackson Et Al
- By Derek Landy: Skulduggery Pleasant
- By Alexander Gordon Smith: Escape the Furnace
- By Scott Westerfeld: Peeps/The Last days, So Yesterday
- Pennyblade by JLWorrad (DNF'ed because of the constant sex, but damn was it an interesting and enjoyable first 80 pages)
- Movies and Shows: Serial Mom, Twin Peaks, Hackers, Tampopo, The Umbrella Academy, Breaking Bad, True Stories, Lair of the White Worm, Do the Right Thing, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, SLC Punk, I Saw The TV Glow, Dr. Who.
by Str8GayTossinItAway