I’ve always had difficulty picking books I’ll enjoy and recently, I found it may be because I seem to have aphantasia. i.e. an inability to visualize scenes as most readers do. I have to spend an exhausting amount of effort to visualize and even then, do so very vaguely.
So in general, I **dislike** books heavy on visual descriptions or fight/action scenes.
Conversely, I tend to **like** books with character interactions and analyses, dialogues, monologues, as well as explanations of how things work and interesting thought experiments.
I’m **also** currently looking for fiction that is very easy/effortless to read since I have lately been having an immense amount of trouble in completing a book. Even when I like a book early on, I’ve been dropping it.
**Books I recently dropped:**
* Anna Karenina: Loved it early on, but started losing interest 70% of the way. I’m at 80% now but can’t bring myself to return to it at all, even after a break.
* If on a Winter’s Night, A Traveler: I enjoyed the concept early on but man, it was difficult and by the half-way point, felt very non-nonsensical and repetitive. 50% of the way, I had to stop because it became too much of a chore.
* The City and The Stars: I like the book but considering dropping it now at 50% of the way because of how much effort it requires (maybe since it’s a description-heavy book).
* Handmaid’s Tale: Again, felt too description-heavy, so was exhausting.
* Dragon’s Egg: Couldn’t even make it past the prologue because I was having so much difficulty with it.
**Some books I loved and which never felt like a chore to read:**
* Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: This is the only recent book I managed to complete.
* Flowers for Algernon.
* Ender’s Game/Shadow.
* Children of Time.
* Never Let Me Go.
* House of the Scorpion.
Ideally, I’d like to avoid YA since I don’t like the *feel* of what I tried of it; much of it feels very “go-go-go” and “immediate” (talking about stuff like present tense narration which is constantly focused on the current action) or touches themes I’m not into. But I’ll admit, I may just have tried the wrong types of YA and I loved House of the Scorpion even though it’s YA. So want to avoid it but not completely closed off to it.
by sib43