• Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee
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    4 months ago

    Adult books are about sad people having affairs

    You’re not really allowed to comment on books if you exclusively read shit books FFS

    Ask for recommendations online and you get pretentious wanky answers too

    No, 1984 is outdated and boring, and a coffee table book. You want -

    The One Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out Of A Window And Disappeared

    A Man Called Ove (Anxious People too)

    A Man With One Of Those Faces

    The Echo Chamber

    The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry

    The Girl With All The Gifts

    Hard Landing

    The Idiot’s Club

    All modern and absolutely beautiful

    • Mighty@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      To be fair: I am currently reading “how high we go in the dark” by Sequoia Namamatsu. It’s so sad. It’s speculative fiction, but everything is too real and too sad.

      Being an adult means also confrontation with sad topics

      • Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        True, but I promise you’ll get enough of that from real life after half a dozen decades

        Read something lighthearted, life has enough drama

        • Mighty@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          Well I have 4 decades already and I’ve read a lot of books. Light and heavy. Because that’s what life and art is about. I don’t believe in comfort food all the time. Sometimes you just need the poetry of hardship.

    • flambonkscious@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      Thanks, this is good. I’ve just started with the 100 year old guy and it’s interesting (early days, though!).

      The thing I’ve always hated is stories always revolve around conflict and (usually) people making terrible choices. Watching lessons in chemistry was mostly delightful because of this (must read that!)

      I’d quite happily read lots of stuff that’s just ‘nice’ and people being good. I’m sure I’d get tired of it eventually, but I’m sick of manufactured BS.

      I’m quite aware I’ve grown up on lots of sci fi, so love me some world building and crazy ideas, but I’m starved for characters, broadly speaking…

      • Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        Oo I’m not too into sci-fi but one of my favourites is The Breach by Patrick Lee

        And yes, you should’ve read Lessons in Chemistry instead of watching the mediocre cash-grab, unfortunately

        C’est la vie

        • flambonkscious@sh.itjust.works
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          4 months ago

          Thanks!

          I’m sure the story will be more than satisfying when I get to it. Swallowing the misogyny was bad enough the first time, though - yuck!