Book was hot garbage. The pov was written by somebody who did very little research about musicians. The characters were lifeless, the dialog was flat. In my case, it was reading somebody's very poor draft of a book.

Hee-hee-hee. I haven't read it, but over on r/todayIlearned, it says that he barely remembers writing Cujo for the same reason. (I think his family did an intervention during or after it)

Yes, people will crucify me for this but Stephen King tends to do what you described.

I was like this for a long time and what really got me back into reading long books (currently reading the Stormlight Archive, 1000+ pages per book!) was reading some real "trash" to get back into reading. For me, it was reading a whole bunch of Michael Crichton books. I love his work, it's so dry and technical but more than that, they are silly with generally 2 dimensional characters, but have interesting plots and story beats and are generally really thrilling, but easy reading. I suppose you could say the same for Dan Brown books....

Honestly, reading Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Congo, Prey, Shphere etcetc got me back into reading in a big way and I really can't reccomend some "easy reading" enough to reignite your interest.

If you;re looking for a single authors works to get into as well, read the Discworld series, starting with Guards Guards!

This is so cool! While Terminal World is one of my less-liked books from Reynolds, he remains to be my favorite author.

I agree in general about Stephen King, but not for It.

I loved reading about Derry and the way it breathed menace over the centuries...for me, it enhanced how unfathomably powerful Pennywise was, how deeply entrenched the evil was in the town, and how little chance the Losers Gang had. It also made the later scenes where the adults in the town turn their back on the kids almost...unsurprising, or even something that I was already resigned to by the time it happened. And the amount of history that Derry has imbues its occasional appearance in random books with a lot of tension and anxiety.

TL;DR: I liked reading about Derry and its inhabitants, so it didn't feel like too much, but if you weren't into that, I can understand why it would feel bloated.

Lol, you ask him his opinion and then come back with a childish response?

I can tell you if a meal tastes bad without being able to cook it and the same goes for a book. Don't ask people for their opinion if you're going to get butthurt over it.

My interest of topics are psychology, philosophy and history.

Liu is a very literal translator.

well, it depends on what genre

I would like to know what would you recommend.

The Silo series by Hugh Howey. It takes place in the nuclear apocalypse and everyone lives in underground silos that go down over a hundred floors.

The first book is Wool Omnibus. I should warn you it was turned into a series but it originally started as short stories.

Literally quoted you for truth, what planet are you on lol

I don't think so.

Only in that I don't know what sections I would leave out. I love the interludes. I love that Derry has a history and feels like it's alive. The relationships between the losers and other people in town feel super important.

I also think part of the reason people hold it in such high regard is the feeling of accomplishment of finishing such a long novel.

King gets a lot of flack for his novels being to long and needing editing, but as someone that prefers long novels it's never bothered me.

It was probably the “some white guy” comment, not namedropping Wallace.

Thank you so much for the recommendations! :) I hadn't heard of any of those.

>Purple and Black by K.J. Parker

Thanks for the rec! Unfortunately I can't find the ebook version of that - or rather, somewhat bizarrely the Amazon page for that book has the ebook being a completely different book with the same title, at least here in the UK.

You can actually see that my edit was executed before your comment, but thanks for playing.

Yeah, I think he’s very, very accessible, especially Vineland, which is like Pynchon smoked some weed and riffed on 1980s movies and daytime TV for 400 pages. It’s a pretty good hint at what Tommy was up to during his 17 gap between Gravity’s Rainbow and Vineland.

This might be an offbeat suggestion, but have you tried having an eye test? Since I got covid last summer my vision was affected, too mildly to really notice, but just enough to make reading more laborious. As a result I was reading less because I was not enjoying it, without really realising why. New glasses sorted the whole thing out!

This is really sad to hear.

The immersion approach is great for Ulysses and Gravity’s Rainbow, especially for a first read. During rereads is the time to really dive in, because a first read gets you somewhat oriented so the novel doesn’t feel quite as alien.

A few of Pynchon’s books are like that. I also use that approach with r/JosephMcElroy and r/Arno_Schmidt.

Maddadam series by Margaret Atwood.

Happened to me too, I had problem concentrating so I stopped for some time. I started again but with poetry because it's short. I bought the complete poems of D.H. Lawrence and it just reminded me how much I love to read. So maybe start with some short stories or poetry.

The book has a lot of direct clues that are worth examining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_World#'Earth'