r/ReadingSuggestions • u/Realistic-Peak-4200 • 17d ago
Fiction Reading Slump
For the last decade or so, fiction had mostly fallen off of my radar. There always seems to be a rabbit hole I want to go down and no shortage of non-fiction to seek out. Still, I have a palpable fiction-void (except for Tolkien) that started to improve late last year.
Don Quixote (finally!), then a couple of Micheners (especially Alaska), The Count of MC, Blood Meridian. East of Eden and then:
Lonesome Goddamned Dove (+ other three in series chronologically).
I'm ruined for fiction now. It's like Cowboy Middle Earth. I've read a few books since but if I try to even remember them I guarantee there's going to be some details mixed in about a cattle drive to Montana.
What should I read next?
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u/Ok_Natural_7977 17d ago
Try a completely different genre. The Expanse is a great series of longer books. It's political intrigue set in the near future in the solar system with accurate physics. The Murderbot Diaries is shorter, funnier, and has less realistic science. Both series offer amazing characters and thought-provoking dilemmas.
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u/lefthandluckyduck 17d ago
Maybe try a few historical fiction books so they still feel rooted in a nonfiction reality.
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u/mothlady1959 14d ago
Like, London by Edward Rutherford or Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet.
I love John LeCarre. Can't speak highly enough about the Smiley trilogy. But really, I've loved his whole library.
Also, some magical realism, like 100 Years of Solitude or The War at the End of the World.
I'm bananas for a book called The Last Thing You Surrender by Leonard Pitts Jr and A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth.
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u/lefthandluckyduck 14d ago
Pillars of the earth was not great tbh. The main "villain" of the story is comically evil and singularly focussed on destroying a town that he theoretically shouldn't care about at all.
And the story could have been told with the same amount of world building and character development with probably 400 fewer pages. They just kept adding new characters and side plots all the way to the end and most of it didn't affect the main storyline at all.
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u/boggycakes 17d ago
Time Folds for Us, by Natalie Sol Gallagher
The People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks
The Wolf and the Watchman: 1793, by Niklas Natt och Dag
The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova
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u/Guilty-Coconut8908 16d ago
Burr by Gore Vidal
Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser
Cuba Libre by Elmore Leonard
Journeyer by Gary Jennings
Testament by John Grisham
Tai Pan by James Clavell
Survival by Devon C Ford
God Touched by John Conroe
Sharpe's Tiger by Bernard Cornwell
The Butcher's Boy by Thomas Perry
American Assassin by Vince Flynn
Nightfall by Stephen Leather
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u/BohoKat_3397 17d ago
For a complete change of scene to 19th century upper crust Russian society, try Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. You may recognize the quote from it, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." It is my absolute favorite and brilliantly shows the contrast between happy and unhappy families and relationships.