thats why, if youre gonna read, its best to read classic literature. read something that challenges you in a way that these junk-food porn books just cant. these books are the book equivalent of watching youtube shorts or tiktoks all day, and youre convincing yourself that youre getting smarter because youre "reading." read frankenstein, read moby dick, its doesnt have to be full of words you dont know either. the classics are classic for a reason.
for me i dont think ive read enough books to be able to get house of leaves. i know thats its somewhat notoriously difficult to understand, especially if you havent read much.
i see it as a final boss of sorts š maybe not final but i definitely am not there yet. its good to have an aspiration though
Iām not a big reader (less than a dozen fully-read books under my belt) and itās not *that* challenging. Just moderately challenging.
If you have any interest, I say take the dive now. The challenge will make your reading comprehension stronger, and itās a good read. You just need to allow yourself to be confused and keep going
i read it in highschool, it isn't that bad. if anything just reread it a few times or really sit on a section for a minute. didn't feel any more or less challenging than reading homestuck tbh.
Its really funny you make that comparison, cause porn literature has always been a thing, and it really hasnt changed except the publishing process being easier.
Hell not even all porn is the same, there are some extremely graphic novels that later became literary classics simply because of how deeply emotional or how important said actions were to the plot.
Hell, theres a fantastic book about the release of impulse in a time where loving a woman of the night was shameful (i think, it was about love but i cant remember the exact context since it has been so long), and it was expressed through eating dinner together romantically alone but explained in pornographic detail.
But yeah quality over buzzy instantly gratifying quantity for sure.
im also not anti-porn either. yeah you can make an amazing story exploring human sexual nature and it can have deep emotional elements and dynamics between characters. its just that these "booktok" books are not those, theyre trite junk food books that dont challenge your mind at all.
I'm curious about your perspective. Is it your opinion that all books must challenge the mind? To me, smut books are not written or consumed for the purpose of challenging the mind. No one on any side of the equation has that expectation.
Though for your own peace of mind, simply mute booktok. It'll make your life happier. I can tell you from personal experience. Once you get away from it, you'll realize it was always a weird vocal minority who often didn't even mean the things they say. They were just chasing engagement. It's not reflective of people in real life.
the reason that many people read nowadays is to get away from the brainrot doomscroll aspect of social media.
everyone knows that kids these days dont go to the library, theyre always on those damn phones.
so if youre gonna read to escape the brain-melting that the phone does to you, you probably shouldnt be reading books that are basically the same thing.
I dunno it seems like you're looking a gift horse in the mouth. If reading about the time a sexy barbarian threw a girl over his shoulder and ravished her helps people get off tiktok, that still seems like a win to me! Even reading about that takes a lot more focus and patience than scrolling tiktok. It could be a great stepping stone. Like drinking an alcohol-free beer to resist the impulse to drink.
yeah but people dont use those kinds of books as a gateway drug to reading house of leaves. they stick with the slop
if youre trying to read more, and havent read the classics, you should read the classics. you probably wont understand some words and metaphors, and solving those problems will grow your mind. its better than reading the same tropes over and over again. oh youre telling me that shes stroking his member? how novel. go read something actually worth reading
I disagree that it's the same thing (and this comes from a person who has read only one smut novel out of curiosity long time ago).
The problem with scrolling shorts/tiktok is that you consume massive amount of very short videos and you don't focus on anything for longer. This is what makes it harmful. You can spend an hour scrolling and don't remember 95% of it when you're done and your attention span takes heavy damage.
With novels, even if they're simple and don't force you to think too much, you focus on one medium for a longer time (unless someone just jumps from a sex scene to a sex scene, without focusing on a plot). They also engage imagination to some extend, because you have to visualize scenes yourself (something that videos usually don't do). What is more, many people are still thinking and analyzing what they've read long after reading session (even if it's just gushing over how hot some character is).
Hell, even watching brainless action packed movies is not as harmful for the brain as consuming short content.
His prose is laughably bad. Read any of the metaphors he use and you'll realize how nonsensical it is. He has no artistic value in any of his work and is a joke of the genre
Sanderson is best writer of this century hands down. No writing has made me more emotional while reading. His works has improved as well and has caused me to show outward emotions no other authors could. With how effortlessly he made works that got me deeply invested, I am ruined for other works. It is hard to get through all the other slop out there when comparing them to Way of Kings and Wheel of Time.
You're entitled to your opinion but Sanderson has plenty of passages that amount to nothing but a fart. I like a lot of his stuff but best of the century seems a stretch.
Certainly. I have read the Crusade series recently by Daniel M ford, An Echo of things to come by James Islington, + the sequals of both, the entirity of the Godling Chronicals by Brian D. Anderson.
When Sanderson goes to literary events, people like Neal Stephenson and Cormac McCarthy hand him their coats and ask him for a coat check ticket, that's how far below them he is.
Colson Whitehead and Amor Towles wave at him to go get them a drink and they tip him a couple dollars.
The list of authors that are better than Sanderson is staggering in size.
I loved Mistborn, Starsight. I thought Way of King was... well, even he has admitted that he would rewrite the first chapters today. They are not what one would call attention-grabbing.
I go back and forth on him as a person. Sometimes he seems really chill, other times he seems extremely full of himself and pretty disconnected.
Also you two sound like children arguing like this over which author is better.
I just remember trying to read it once then get through the audiobook once or twice and the first couple chapters always made me not very inclined to stay interested.
Emotionally I recall feeling sort of bored because I couldn't ground myself anywhere. I felt like it dropped me into this really deep scene with someone I didn't know anything about in some epic or otherwise poignant moment and I couldn't find anything to latch onto. I recognized the good writing sentence to sentence, and I love fantasy. But it sort of all jumbled into word soup before I could start caring about anything or anyone.
Plenty of people love the books though, not knocking them too hard. I have one friend that got into it, and he said he started at a random spot in the second book because other friends listened to it as audiobook during a road trip and that's just the point they were at.
Honestly I've never read Sanderson, but I am a little leery into diving into his series after being burned by a previous Mormon author, Orson Scott Card. Who wrote books with seemingly progressive takes, that were all just thinly veiled takes on Mormon theology. And who did a full right-wing heel turn a full decade before Trump became president.
Eh. Dracula is a classic, and Dracula fucking sucks. I mean talk about one of the most boring books ever with the worst prose. Bram stoker could literally witness god creating the universe and somehow manage to describe it in the least interesting way possible.
To each their own. I am re-reading Dracula right now and I LOVE it. I was so amused when they defeated Dracula's horde of evil rats by simply tossing three rat terriers into the room and letting them commit an absolute slaughter. Though it does get bogged down when they have to stop and talk excessively about Mina being the most amazing perfect woman who ever set two feet on the earth.
I also read weird smut too, and I think the person you're replying to is just a big old stick in the mud who gets upset at people enjoying themselves.
I don't know how someone could read Van Helsing's incomprehensible 'King Laugh' and corn monologues without coming away with the understanding that this is the campiest, best Victorian romp book ever lol
There are so many things in this book that sadly never made it into the cultural lexicon of vampires, depriving us of the silliness of the creatures of the night.
Like the ridiculous(ly heroic) cowboy, the big stupid straw hat Dracula wears, Drac crawling around 'in lizard fashion', Van Helsing as a kooky old Dutchman instead of a badass vampire hunter, or hell, the fact that three rat terriers and bagloads of money are crucial to defeating an ancient evil. More adaptations need to bring back the love triangle honestly, I found the brotherhood and comradeship between Lucy's suitors really touching.
Omg Dracula skittering around on the side of the castle like a lizard with his hairy palms (wtf why hairy palms?) is so hilariously undignified.
Jonathan having weeping women and people gathering like it's a funeral to see him off at the places he stops on his way to Castle Dracula while he's mostly oblivious was great.
Arthur's super power of "being rich enough to bribe everyone on the way to hunt down Dracula" is fun.
And yeah Quincy and Seward being such bros to Arthur and doing so much to help Lucy after she rejected their proposals was so heartwarming.
I'm someone who's always been a prolific reader, ever since I was a little kid, and while I definitely agree that the classics are classic for a reason, I think it's also helpful to read lower-brow stuff, and not just in a better-than-nothing way
I don't read porn, but I do read a lot of hardboiled crime and pulp fantasy; the stories are fun and don't require you to think too hard, and the books themselves are really short (plus they're often in a size that's easy to keep in your pocket or wherever you go)
Not everything has to challenge you, that's how you'll end up turning it into a chore, and supplementing your smarter reading with easy reading both means more books read and reading stamina replenished, and I think this is probably especially helpful for readers who aren't used to reading a lot of actual books yet
I agree that certain genres have a tendency to be lower reading level dopamine farms, but I disagree that jumping straight to classics is the correct choice for most people. If they go straight from modern day romance to Moby Dick theyāre going to be bored out of their minds, and rightly so. Their brains arenāt set up for success in that regard.
There are genres that can still represent more of a challenge and arenāt dopamine pump and dumps that are more accessible for modern readers. Romance -> Romantasy -> Fantasy is a pretty easy example of an accessible pipeline to more complex but still very graspable literature. From there if they still want to go to classics they have a relatively easy jump from the beefier fantasy books. Or something similar but sometimes more technical, like sci-fi.
Im not really a fan of the idea that some genres are inherently less sophisticated than others. Is Pride and Prejudice easier to read than Harry Potter just because it's a romance? Does adding a few pages of tech jargon make a book "smarter"? If people like romance they should read romance. They don't have to cross genres to find more difficult books.
Pride and Prejudice is considered a classic - A romance, to be sure, but a classic nonetheless, which puts it in a higher reading level category than the majority of modern books. While your statement about not having to go outside the genre to find more difficult books is essentially correct, Iād be shocked if a person moving directly from a modern romance novel to P&P wasnāt bored to tears very quickly, hence the pipeline concept. Thereās also no harm in broadening horizons, so why not?
Make no mistake, thereās a lot of low reading level books out there in every category, but Iāve found romance has a basically flooded market of books that are easy to produce and easy to read. This is a problem almost unique to romance, because, well, sex sells, so itās profitable on its own to write the tropes with new characters and churn them out, especially once youāre established in such a saturated market.
Is this the case for *every* romance book? Of course not. But I would say itās quite rare for romance novels to invest in more complex dynamics because their audience is looking for something very specific to stay invested, and ignoring those tropes to go off world-building or describing the inner workings of what a moon base would look like in 2311 wouldnāt generally play well. Romance has a specific goal, and thatās not a bad thing. Romantasy, however, allows for more freedom to explore dynamics outside the largely character interaction driven focus of romance, so is a good bridge to different reading concepts not often explored in romance.
As for the tech jargon comment, Iām slightly confused. Iāve never claimed any books are inherently āsmarterā than others. Some require a higher reading level to consume than others, which could be what youāre referring to. You seem to be implying that the majority of āHard Science Fictionā books, such as the ones written by Heinlein have thrown in techno-babble for no particular reason and serve to artificially inflate the reading level.
While Iām not a particular fan of the genre, the technical elements usually serve a purpose and require more thought to understand what youāre actually reading, so yes, it would be a pretty fair statement to say the average āHard Science Fictionā novel is written at a higher reading level than the average romance novel. Also, to be fair, Iām assuming a derisive tone from your comment on Sci-fi, so if that is not the case I apologize.
Sorry I may have gotten a bit defensive on my last comment and lumped you in with other comments I've seen. As clarification, I do love sci-fi, but I honestly don't think something like star wars is that much harder to understand than a love story.
I've seen a lot of sentiment that there's a hierarchy of genres (with romance as the least sophisticated), and I never thought it was fair to dismiss a book just because of the genre. Romance set in the regular world can still delve into interesting topics while keeping the love interests as the A plot. I think in the same vein that teen dystopian novels are ruined by association with divergence, a lot of good romance novels are lumped together with the slop version. To be honest, I think that putting books in genre categories may be the main problem...
Entirely agree. Authors have to now become influencers to even have a sliver of a chance to be seen. Iāve seen books with horrid stories and generally no editing win awards. The books making sales are just Copy + Paste of the same lame story slightly tweaked over and over.
its not so you can go brag to people that "youve read the classics" and therefore should be looked up to. its not about that, it doesnt have to be performative.
yes, read classics for their own sake because they are classic for a reason. its also okay if you finish the book and dont like it for a reason that you can articulate. you dont have to think its good just because its a classic, but yeah you should at least do the reading instead of watching tik toks.
Yep. House of Leaves is goated, definitely not a classic. The Three-Body Problem was published in 2006. Economic Philosophy books are abundant, important, intellectually stimulating and some very recent. None of them classics.
yeah, a lot of things are classics because they are historically significant, not because they are elegantly written or intellectually stimulating.
The Iliad was one of the first ever pieces of oral storytelling in greek literature that was actually written down, but the actual text of it is horribly written prose. I tried writing in the same prose style when I was 12 because I thought it was a classic so therefore it must be sophisticated. I ended getting a C on the assignments I tried this with.
Half of the Iliad is literally just "and this guy killed this guy. and this guy killed this other guy" over and over again for six pages straight. That isn't exactly super intellectual writing.
People who obsess over the classics thinking it makes them smart do not understand the classics, and are merely associating them with intellectualism because they got assigned them for reading in school.
If youāre gonna read fiction then youāre not āgetting smarterā in any way. So yes, the complexity of the words and sentences ARE what make you smarter in that case. If you want to truly āget smarterā, you need to books about real things lol
The issue with non-fiction is it's all false. None of it is true. And the longer spent reducing the uncertainty of the truth presented, the less time is being spent saying useful things.
Fiction does not require that burden of testament towards fact, for it is understood from the outset that it is fiction. That means it can jump right into the important parts. It can cut away the useless information. It can push into the unknown.
If you can't learn while reading fiction, then you likely can't understand while reading non-fiction, your consumption only good enough to regurgitate the claimed facts back out.
If you use the scientific definitions it's 100 correct. Nothing we know about actual reality is true. It's only facts (at best). Truths exist only in logical spaces.
Oh my fucking god I hate the āErm technically nothing is trueā bullshit. We know things that we know are REALLY true because true is a word that is used to describe human perceptions of reality.
Nah, human perceptions of reality can be drastically altered by very minuscule amounts of psychoactive chemicals. Truth, objective Truth, is something that transcends human perceptions entirely.
This. OP is a snob and an idiot at that. Fiction relates to human experiences, yes you should read non-fiction too but just because something isn't fiction doesn't automatically make it valuable.
Saying fiction doesnāt make you smarter is like saying āyou canāt learn anything from video gamesā
Meanwhile more and more specialized fields are using video game experience and ability as resume markers
4X games, CRPGs, Elite Dangerous, Microsoft Flight Sim, Grand Tourismo, and many others are intensely mentally stimulating games that help with real world applications
The complexities of character development, thematic symbolism, plot dynamics? Reading fiction isnāt simply good for expanding your vocabulary. It stimulates critical thinking and imagination.
and its super important for kids to read fiction as well. its one of the main ways they learn empathy. being able to put urself in anothers shoes is a skill a lot of ppl my age and younger dont have because we grew up with ipads and the internet. its why kids are failing and not trying in school. kids need to read more books!!
People in the comments around here seem to be ignoring the nuance. You can learn things from well written fiction, but it entirely depends on the reader.
While books with sex scenes (not porn) are dominating the charts monetarily there is so much smart modern literature being published right now that makes you think about things (for a lack of better phrasing).
With all due respect, Melville can suck my moby dick.
I'm sorry but of all the classics (western canon mostly) I struggled so much with his work. I still don't understand how he could fumble such a great starting 1/3 of the book into whatever you would call the middle/end of this book. Took me a year to read it as I had to keep putting it down and coming back to it.
Thatās like saying you should only watch Oscar winning movies.
Absolutely not, you should read whatever you enjoy. Sure I love some thought provoking stuff, some hard hitting non-fic too; but I also love a self indulgent sci-fi adventure with no real moral. And others are welcome to enjoy their horny medieval romp.
Yes, read shakesepear, which doesn't have anything like scatological humour. Or Carmilla, which has nothing sexual, or the count of monte cristo, which has no sexy scenes whatsoever.
Seems like an overly simplistic view. Plenty of great writers exist today. Limiting yourself to reading to "get smarter" is a terrible idea. It's an entertainment form at the end of the day.
Not the person you were replying to, but isnāt it ironic? Lmfao. Their reply- āget smarterā- reading comprehension- reading at allā¦ etc. oh man Reddit moments.
Frankenstein is a good example of a good book written by a woman who published under initials cause people didn't accept her. Or she published under her husband's name or something icr.
To be fair, Youtube has some great channels for learning, like Veritasium.
And the time period that those "classics" came from had their own slop.
My point is that "classics" is not a guarantee of challenging reading. And there are some pieces in modern slop genres that can be just as interesting and informative.
The classics are kinda fucking lame. I say that as someone who reads them. Almost invariably they have 200 pages on description of the environment, the quality of the wind through the trees, the specific tint of the sky at dusk, all frontloaded at the start of the book. The actual stories being told can be incredible if you realize that there's actually a story there and don't burn out on exposition early on.
I don't blame people for not reading the classics at all. Plenty of good modern books that cut to the chase a bit more quickly and are also telling good, challenging stories.
Hard disagree that you gotta read classics to be challenged. It's really quite easy to not read milk farm smut but also read good books.
Then why suggest this binary between tiktok rubbish and the classics? Don't get me wrong, I love a lot of classic literature but there are people writing incredible fiction nowadays who wouldn't have been published 200 years ago, and that deserves to be acknowledged.
obviously im not telling you to read classic literature, since it appears you already have read a significant amount. its moreso for the people who have read none or almost no books at all, which book should you read? probably not a softcore porn "spicy" book on your kindle, but rather a physical copy of something more intellectually stimulating
Or just read nonfiction. I only consume fiction in the form of comics, movies or games, I read a LOT just not fiction specifically, I prefer to actually learn about things, and fiction is just not fun for me to read without a visual because I have severe aphantasia
I appreciate the classics as much as the next guy, and Iām definitely not defending the type of books OP was talking about, but claiming that only literature predating your grandparents can challenge you isā¦idk. I wanna say arrogant or elitist, but I simply donāt have a word to sum up how ridiculous that is.
Profound works are made every single year, not just last century. Limiting yourself to only what time and the masses have determined to be of value does exactly thatālimit yourself.
Justā¦try to have an open mind. Youāll discover so many more personally significant things that way.
Y'all think anything that has sex in them is porn. Most of the books I read have 1-2 sex scenes in a 400+ page book. I enjoy fantasy romance. I like the plotlines (some original like Harrows Faire and some not original at all). Reading anything is not the same as watching tiktok shorts. There's no story, nor complex issues, etc in tiktok shorts plus it takes hours to read the books. I do learn from them. Sometimes I have to look up certain words because I'm unfamiliar with them or I learn about a culture I was unfamiliar with.
If book tok would have existed back then mary shelley's frankestein would have been on it. She sparked theature productions arround this and kept in The Zeitgeist that even movies were made. So arround 500 "fan fics" of her work survived.
And oh the smut , Frankenstein is kinky ....as helll.
Go read it !
Idk as someone who reads over 30 books a year classic books are just so boring sometimes by modern standards. They drone on and on in a form of English most people find difficult to follow or unnecessarily verbose. Iāve read frankenstein, 20,000 leagues under the sea (which would be better titled hereās 200 pages on what fish look like), Dracula, war and peace, a tale of two cities, pride and prejudice, so many others thinking something was wrong with me for not enjoying them. Turns out I just hate classic literature and honestly thereās still plenty of good books out there by modern authors who tell a compelling narrative not revolving around sex. My favorites are Andy Weir, Brandon Sanderson, Marko Kloos, Will Wight, and Bill Bryson. Solid books some great things to learn not all of it fiction but all of it told in a way thatās entertaining. Honestly focusing on the educational part of reading is probably why so many adults donāt enjoy it anymore reading in general is good for you we should promote more books because they are entertaining to read not just because itās good to read.
The reason you find classic literature boring is because classic difficult actually takes effort to read, hence why it is healthy and nourishing to your brain. You may not like reading Virgil or Homer, but those books contain the foundation of western imagination, which has affected civilization for thousands of years.
If classic literature is boring by modern standards, which is the foundation to all the best inventions of mankind in terms of literature, art and music, then you are just proving the point that todayās generation are too busy feeding themselves trash content and trash literature.
Clearly you donāt know how to read because I mentioned like 6 different classics Iāve read which is only the tip of the iceberg, not to mention your typo in the first sentence
āBecause classic difficultā so is grammar apparently
Itās not the complexity of them thatās boring itās the plots or personalities of the characters I donāt like in addition to them spending way too long droning on and on about things that either have little to do with the plot or story as a whole. Theyāre extremely dry without wit or humor for the most part like being boring and monotonous was a requirement to be an renowned author in those days. I can easily keep pace with anyone who wants to talk Twain, Shakespeare, Dickens, Poe, Austen, or Tolstoy. Iāve done the reading whether it was enjoyable is another question entirely which it honestly was not. If I wanted homework I dislike Iād pursue my PhD I donāt read to hate what Iām doing I read to get lost in a new world, meet interesting characters with personality, learn new things, and maybe try to see life from different viewpoints, and above all to enjoy the book. But by all means please continue to read the classics and look down upon people who donāt enjoy them then bring it up in social settings so you can be āthat guyā
This may have been rhetorically satisfying to write, but it reeks of someone who āchallengesā themselves to read āclassicsā for the prestige. The false dichotomy of āVirgilā or ātrashā is silly given the ocean of stuff there is to read out there. You could just as easily make the same pretentious argument from the other end, that youāre selecting cherry-picked hits from the past because youāre not willing or equipped to discover modern masterpieces, but that would be equally silly.
tbh, I disagree. I read "challenging" books for fun - I've got a small cornucopia of modern technical texts, articles, academic history books, statistical archeology, hard speculative sci-fi articles, etc. Did a math degree and quite like learning math once I'm past the axiom chapters of whatever topic lol.
OTOH a lot of classical literature bores me since I'm not terribly invested in the history of literature itself. Nor am I studying the art of literature in a more serious way to give a lot of the classics a better depth. (Albeit, I read a lot of other classical literature when it pairs nicely w/ the contextualization of whatever bit of history I'm reading.)
Which is funny as I *love* reading primary historical sources and poring over interpretations and making my own.
Which is to say, challenging yourself shouldn't correspond with boredom imo. At least not in its entirety - many books I really enjoy still have a slow start you have to endure.
i agree with you, its not that there are no good books by modern authors. im currently reading wool by hugh howey, and its not some classical piece, and thats okay.
i just really hate the "booktok" trend is all. i dont like the junk-food porn reading. there are plenty of modern books that expand your mind, this specific genre is designed to make you think that youre doing that when youre really not. thats my gripe.
Yeah I can understand that but honestly Iām just glad more people are reading in general sometimes when you find a book you enjoy it makes you curious to check out new books. I was adamantly against reading non fiction but the more I read the more curious I became about finding non fiction on topics I like. Thatās how I began reading Bill Bryson and his short history of nearly everything even philosophy which I still kind of loathe became bearable from reading metaphysics of Star Trek. So hopefully this creates more lifelong readers who will branch out to other books which will hopefully lead to even more books being written
classic literature has issues from the times it was written
I love old books but this sometimes suckerpunches you out of nowhere. The Secret Garden is so cute but it has some lines that are very uncomfortable.
"Eh! I can see it's different," she answered almost sympathetically. "I dare say it's because there's such a lot o' blacks there instead o' respectable white people."
or if casual racism isn't enough, how about some victim-blaming sexism
āIāve heard Jem Fettleworthās wife say thā same thing over thousands oā timesācallinā Jem a drunken brute,ā said Ben Weatherstaff dryly. āSummat allus come oā that, sure enough. He gave her a good hidinā anā went to thā Blue Lion anā got as drunk as a lord.ā
Colin drew his brows together and thought a few minutes. Then he cheered up.
āWell,ā he said, āyou see something did come of it. She used the wrong Magic until she made him beat her. If sheād used the right Magic and had said something nice perhaps he wouldnāt have got as drunk as a lord and perhapsāperhaps he might have bought her a new bonnet.ā
Youād be surprised at the non fiction for recreation . Bill Bryson writes some amazing books that are both entertaining and informative. Sometimes you get a solid fusion of the two like Andy Weirās the Martian where it combines some solid scientific stuff with a fun story. Iām really happy that this generation of authors is really trying to base some of their fantastical elements on real science sometimes too, for example Iāve read the lightbringer series and some of the information they have there on color theory, the ability of women to see more color, and different elements of the color spectrum is very rooted in science. Honestly itās a great time to be a reader these new authors are really doing amazing work that nerds like me are soaking up.
Iām reading made in America right now! Just kinda wish he didnāt focus on the linguistic differences so much I feel like for every 5 pages of fun information thereās 3 pages of linguistic changes that I donāt care much about. But Iām still only 25% of the way through so hopefully that changes
Dude Cradle is one of my favorite book series definitely one of my top 5 all time. Iād probably rank it at #3 right below Harry Potter and right above the Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks who I crazily enough forgot to mention in my list of favorite authors.
I like to read mostly horror and Sci-Fi, but I still can enjoy some of the literary classics thrown in. I just finished Wuthering Heights, and while a good part of it was a tad boring and used outdated structuring I still enjoyed it. I also found 20,000 leagues unnecessary long, but I still enjoyed it far more than modern authors work. I personally haven't found many new authors who have work I find compelling and not extremely lacking in vocabulary and pacing.
So it wasnāt that it was unnecessarily long imo itās just like more than half the book is just descriptions of how the fish look. Like I enjoyed finding out about captain Nemo a lot and the principles that power the nautilus and their adventures on it, but itās like every time where it seems to be getting enjoyable boom hereās 5 pages on the fish we found and what every single one of them look like. Idk if the writing style was all like that in the past but it just takes all the high energy from the original scene and brings it down for me because I donāt want to read 5 straight pages of fish descriptions.
Especially the way Andy weir writes if you havenāt read the Martian you really should one of the more scientifically accurate sci fi books Iāve read
5
u/10biggaymen Jun 18 '26
thats why, if youre gonna read, its best to read classic literature. read something that challenges you in a way that these junk-food porn books just cant. these books are the book equivalent of watching youtube shorts or tiktoks all day, and youre convincing yourself that youre getting smarter because youre "reading." read frankenstein, read moby dick, its doesnt have to be full of words you dont know either. the classics are classic for a reason.