Books I don't read
a list I came up with in about 5 minutes
I don’t like sci-fi. Just can’t do it. What they don’t tell you: the writing is usually worse, and big sci-fi fans don’t like to admit this.
I do like dystopian, I guess, like if everything is going to hell then I’m in for it? I don’t like heavy world-building. I tried to read Dune when the first movie came out and I almost threw it on my grill
I liked Severance by Ling Ma and I liked Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
If there’s historical fiction, that book may also go on the grill. I don’t care if events happen in the past, I just don’t want every detail about the Revolutionary War retold to me. I’m in The Maniac right now which talks about historical events and historical characters, but a historical setting is different than historical fiction IMO
History? I don’t read that either. It’s important, I get it, but I’m also not 50 yet, so maybe things change and I will also enter a WW2 or Roman phase
Poetry? Lol. Because I was *that guy* in your lit class, I read a bunch of Beats poetry in college and it’s not great but I do enjoy stuff from that time the best, like give me Auden and Frank O’Hara. But no, I skip over poems in lit journals or magazines and haven’t checked out a poetry book from the library in probably 10 years
Short stories, I don’t read them either. I subscribe to The New Yorker (print edition!) and may have read one short story. I think I read “Cat Person” after I saw it got buzz online and I went and found my print copy and read that. I’ve even tried authors I admire that have stories in there and can’t complete them.
So I don’t read collections or anthologies really. The only ones I recall liking off the top of my head is Jhumpa Lahiri’s first one, Kevin Wilson’s and Justin Taylor’s
Other things I don’t read: Spy thrillers, cozy mysteries, horror, international intrigue, really any fiction outside of “literary fiction” I don’t read
If the first chapter of the next book is included in the back of the current book, I probably won’t like either one of them
If it’s at Target, mad respect, but I probably won’t like it, just being honest.
I think Station Eleven eventually made it to Target, cheers
I’ll do a “what I do read” post very soon.
Keep going-
Josh Spilker
I've been a catholic reader since grade school and was very into sci-fi for years but basically stopped until Dune was published in 1980 or whenever. I've read it twice at least. But nothing else has drawn me in even when friends or students recommend an author. In terms of fantasy, I've enjoyed the first three Game of Thrones novels but never got into #4 and #5.
So many things are cross-genre these days. I wonder if you may be excluding things you’ll like because of the label on them.
For example, here are a couple of poems that might quicken your old interest in poetry.
The first one could also fall into your #2 category and, since it’s a narrative poem, #5 as well.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47104/the-curator
The second is perhaps the first Barbie poem; I don’t know of anything earlier. The poet’s sense of humor is startling and original.
https://poets.org/poem/kinky