The last real books I ever read were Animal Farm and Into the Wild from high school. I’ve always loved reading, but for the past 4-5 years I have done nothing but read translated webnovels (fantasy, martial arts, and magic stuff), almost all of which is what I’d assume to be of poor writing quality and extremely easy difficulty compared to some of the books I dream of reading, like Crime and Punishment, Lolita, 100 Years of Solitude, and Infinite Jest. Most people consider these books as hard-to-read masterpieces. Is there a pathway or difficulty curve into the classics that I can follow, or should I just brute force it and go straight into one of them?
I’m also pretty worried that my reading level has decayed far too much due to the brainrot of some of the webnovels I’ve read
by Orubas
2 Comments
Why do you dream of specifically reading these books?
If you’re looking to get back to reading and improve the quality of your reads, there is no need to jump into the Russians or other books you think you “should” read. The books you mentioned above are hard. I consider myself a sophisticated reader but those books have challenged me or I’ve found them dense and boring. There is lots of high quality popular fiction. I read the New York Times book reviews and their recommended lists because I’ve found some high quality, entertaining books there.
Read what you like.