What *aren't* you reading?

[rousseau]

Here's a fun, and what will be short-lived, spin-off. Rather than explaining what you are reading, instead explain what you aren't reading. What types of books do you avoid? What types of books did you once read, that you don't read anymore? And so on..

What prompted this thread was the realization that my history/sociology phase looks like it's coming to a close. When I moved back to a university city with used book shops abound ca 2011 I started getting into history. But nowadays it looks like that interest is starting to wane, just not much more substance to gain from it.

Lately, I find myself becoming more interested in practical books instead: things that make me better at my job, and whatever else is actually materially relevant to my day to day life. I could also see myself delving into the travel writing genre. Might even start taking a closer look at the Art books I've collected over the years.

Anyway.. what aren't you reading these days?

 

[southernhybrid]

I don't read fiction anymore. I used to love reading all kinds of old classic novels, but for some reason, I just can't stand reading fiction any longer. I've read a handful of good novels in the past 20 years, but no more. I used to love long Russian novels too, but no more. I can't explain it. I only read non fiction now.

 

[WAB]

I used to love reading fantasy fiction, but when you shop around for a book, you always see: part five of the third series of the Nepton Cycle, Second Triad...etc etc....


Hawthorne!

I actually do not work for Nathaniel Hawthorne, nor his estate, nor anyone attached to his estate...I just really love the guy.

 

[bigfield]

Goosebumps.

 

[spikepipsqueak]

I used to share a house with a woman who kindly gave me a copy of a book about Jack the Ripper for my birthday, because "you like all that science-fictioney stuff".

Yes I do, Jen, but this isn't it.

Horror, fact or fiction, isn't my favourite.The nearest I get is that I have read maybe 5 Stephen King novels.

 

[Tigers!]

I used to devour military history books and had a huge collection esp. WW1/WW2 technology and equipment but now find it is hard going.

I now like to read historical novels - Patrick O'Brian, Dudley Pope, Conn Iggulden etc.
Don't know why my tastes have changed.

 

[rousseau]

I don't read fiction anymore. I used to love reading all kinds of old classic novels, but for some reason, I just can't stand reading fiction any longer. I've read a handful of good novels in the past 20 years, but no more. I used to love long Russian novels too, but no more. I can't explain it. I only read non fiction now.

I have the same problem.

I read a lot of fiction as an adolescent and teen, IIRC I was reading John Grisham at around age 11 or 12, and later Stephen King and Kurt Vonnegut. But this was only because I hadn't been exposed to non-fiction yet.

Later when I actually got some free time and money and realized that academics have written in depth studies on nearly everything I never looked back. Over the years I've taken a few stabs at Dickens and Hemingway (I can't tell you how many times I've read the intro to Tale of Two Cities), and some other classics, and enjoyed it, but never finished another work of fiction.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

I avoid reading mystery or horror novels. Not into them. With horror it's because you're only allowed to feel one thing: horror. There doesn't seem to be a lot you can do with horror.

 

[abaddon]

I have a hard time reading fiction anymore. I want to read it, I want that state of "flow" and getting lost in a pleasant fiction. But I get a feeling I'm wasting time, and there are several nonfiction books staring at me accusingly. So I rarely get past the first few chapters of a novel.

It was totally the opposite when I was young.

 

[WAB]

I avoid reading mystery or horror novels. Not into them. With horror it's because you're only allowed to feel one thing: horror. There doesn't seem to be a lot you can do with horror.

I like horror for the mood. I don't think I've ever been scared by a horror novel. The only one that came close was Blatty's The Exorcist [and maybe King's Pet Sematary]. Even with Lovecraft, there's no actual horror, just lush, poetic, Halloweeny-imagery.

A truly scary novel is something like The Red Badge of Courage.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

I avoid reading mystery or horror novels. Not into them. With horror it's because you're only allowed to feel one thing: horror. There doesn't seem to be a lot you can do with horror.

I like horror for the mood. I don't think I've ever been scared by a horror novel. The only one that came close was Blatty's The Exorcist [and maybe King's Pet Sematary]. Even with Lovecraft, there's no actual horror, just lush, poetic, Halloweeny-imagery.

A truly scary novel is something like The Red Badge of Courage.

Well I've been finding lately I need to be in the mood to enjoy certain things. Never in the mood to enjoy horror. Except maybe on Halloween.

 

[WAB]

I avoid reading mystery or horror novels. Not into them. With horror it's because you're only allowed to feel one thing: horror. There doesn't seem to be a lot you can do with horror.

I like horror for the mood. I don't think I've ever been scared by a horror novel. The only one that came close was Blatty's The Exorcist [and maybe King's Pet Sematary]. Even with Lovecraft, there's no actual horror, just lush, poetic, Halloweeny-imagery.

A truly scary novel is something like The Red Badge of Courage.

Well I've been finding lately I need to be in the mood to enjoy certain things. Never in the mood to enjoy horror. Except maybe on Halloween.

Read The Red Badge of Courage!

It's frighteningly good.



Aw hell I reckon you already read it...















Well read it again!


In a past life I was a mean, nasty old schoolmaster.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Supposedly 'wickedly funny' novels by Brits. Over the years I've been conned by reviewers into reading satirical fiction from the UK that would make me cry with laughter. Yeah. Not so much. I've read a slew (excuse me, Bertram, slue) of 'em. From Staying with Relations (1930) by Rose Macaulay to more recent entries such as Ending Up by Kingsley Amis and The Bottle Factory Outing by Beryl Bainbridge. A real chore to get through, all three of those. I rarely stop reading a book -- I think I can name all the books I've put down midway through. But now I'm wary, and when a reviewer tells me that a British novel is bristling with razor-edged satire, I know it's not for me.

 

[rousseau]

I have a hard time reading fiction anymore. I want to read it, I want that state of "flow" and getting lost in a pleasant fiction. But I get a feeling I'm wasting time, and there are several nonfiction books staring at me accusingly. So I rarely get past the first few chapters of a novel.

It was totally the opposite when I was young.

I get that exact feeling. There is some fiction that can feel worthwhile, but not enough that I'll spend a whole month with a book. Usually I'll pick up a good author, read the prose for half an hour, then put it back down. The real world (and reading about it) is just way too interesting to me.

And a lot of the morals and narratives of popular fiction and TV have the opposite effect: I don't find them interesting at all. I'll watch some movies for the cinematography, but I have a hard time not finding most popular entertainment annoying. I've accepted that stuff's not made for me.

 

[Goodchild]

I used to love reading fantasy fiction, but when you shop around for a book, you always see: part five of the third series of the Nepton Cycle, Second Triad...etc etc....

That is definitely one of the biggest turnoffs to a book for me as well. Book series don't earn a series name until they've proven to be popular, IMO.

 

[Toni]

I read very little history. I also read very little horror. I can't abide Stephen King, although I have enjoyed film adaptations of some of his novels. I read very little in the way of mystery books. Sherlock Holmes makes my head want to explode. One exception is that I really do enjoy Tana French novels--highly recommend.

I love good fiction. I love good sci-fi and good fantasy/speculative fiction but those are really hard to come by.

 

[jab]

biographies of American Presidents--also on a hiatus of reading books about the vicissitudes of Trump's presidency--Wolff was enough
book length horror fiction both the torture psychopath stuff and the supernatural
Joyce Carol Oates' fiction--read her heavily in the 70's, bogged down in her faux Gothic work of the 1980s, and stopped for a while; tried her fictionalization of Marilyn Monroe c. 2000, couldn't finish it; haven't been back since
Also, it's been quite a while since I have read a printed play voluntarily

 

[Tharmas]

Like several others, I have cut way down on my fiction reading in adulthood. I do have a friend who writes award-winning fiction, so I read and enjoy his stuff, but otherwise I read history and pop science and stuff like that. Strange, because I’m in the process of writing a novel. If it ever gets published I wonder if I’ll read it.

 

[Tigers!]

Like several others, I have cut way down on my fiction reading in adulthood. I do have a friend who writes award-winning fiction, so I read and enjoy his stuff, but otherwise I read history and pop science and stuff like that. Strange, because I’m in the process of writing a novel. If it ever gets published I wonder if I’ll read it.

If you send yourself a complimentary copy you might read it.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Anyway.. what aren't you reading these days?

I stopped reading the Anita Blake series: Necromancer vampire-hunter dating a Werewolf... At first it was new and different, but when it became the author getting therapy through writing about violent sex scenes, I lost all interest.
I realized I stopped caring whether her characters live or die, and that's the whole reason I read anything.