Maybe I’m not be choosing the best books to read. I love literary fiction and classics, but it often seems a lot of the pop literary fiction overexplains things to death, the “metaphors” are obvious and explicit, every emotional undertone or plot background is just given to us (don’t want to dump on any books in particular)
I miss the books where there’s more subtlety and nuance to dig into. Let me use my critical thinking abilities. Anyone else feel this way?
by majer_lazor
4 Comments
What books are you talking about specifically? Knowing that would help suggest books that do things differently.
At the end of the day people have complained and debated didacticism in literature for centuries and a vague post like this doesn’t help much.
I know you say you don’t want to ‘dump on any books in particular’, but I think you’re going to need to give some examples. These kinds of broad generalisations are seldom useful given that there’s a greater diversity of books available than ever before, so the likelihood is that yes, you’re simply not picking the right ones to read; approaching the problem in a more granular way should help.
They do exist, though you might be looking at wrong places for recommendations. The kind of books you are looking for won’t necessarily be at the top of the list for something like Goodreads. Those are often easier to read YA/New Adult books hence the popularity among masses.
You might have better luck looking into any bookclubs that align with your interests, literary awards and their shortlists, looking up authors of different backgrounds, combining a bunch of these methods and so on.
I kinda get what OP says, although their examples (which they don’t give unfortunately) are surely different. Four of the five books I read most recently are quite contemporary:
– Cesar Aira – The Divorce
– Hari Kunzru – The Impressionist
– Yiyun Li – The Vagrants
– Maya Binyam – Hangman
And then, most recently, I read Virgina Woolf – To the Lighthouse
It is unfair to compare any debut novel (which three of the four contemporary ones are) to a classic, but…damn! To the Lighthouse is a very different animal.
I don’t know how much of the reason is literary trends (such as “overexplaining things”) and how much is just quality though.