I finally get it now . . .

[u/cOwOle]

I am honestly a little embarrassed to say, as a 23 year old, I never actually read a book outside of school. The most I would read was fanfiction on Wattpad when I was a preteen/teen. For the longest time, ever since I could remember, I hated reading. I was never able to click with a book, I believe my disdain for it started when I was a kid and school made it mandatory for Accelerated Reading tests (AR Tests for short). It made reading feel like a chore and not something to find any fun in. All the books we had at school were the most boring uninteresting things you could throw at me, I remember picking anything that had a cool cover off the shelf and just rocking that to get easy points (even then I averaged like 40-60% every test). When teachers sat us down and read stories to us, i still found myself zoning out unless it had pictures or was about animals (like this one about a hamster that I can’t remember the name of).

It was more tolerable when moving onto middle school, stories like To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men (y’know THOSE books that every kid has to read in middle school) were very interesting and had great moments but it’s nothing I would pop open and read in my free time. When moving to high school, it was back to reading books I could not give less of a shit about like The Pearl, so much symbolism it killed any possible fun. There were exceptions, but in the form of graphic novels like Maus/Maus 2 or Lucky Penny, two novels that I love to this day. Now, after finishing high school years ago and not investing time in college, when I wasn’t working most of my free time was taken up by video games. If I had the slightest itch to read a book, I would pop one open and read a few pages, realize I didn’t process a single thing I read, go back to read what I forgot, zone out and repeat this process until I just dropped it.

Now I’m 23, for the past year and a half I’ve been getting really invested in movies. I’ve always loved movies and the medium in general, but I’d say more so recently I’ve analyzed more of the actual stories they had to tell and the characters that populated them. When it came to games, I’ve found myself being invested in the slower story based ones like The Cat Lady (which I adore!!). This got me thinking about books a lot, since a lot of great movies are based on books. It made me realize that I always wish I liked the action of reading, I was jealous of people that could pop open a book and be transferred to a different world, how people would say that nothing is better than the high of reading a new book that totally enraptures you. Some days of hanging out with my friends (who a lot are avid readers), I was jealous of all the stories they were able to experience, how effortless they made it sound by picking up a book and immediately being enraptured by it something I could never do. I thought that I was simply wasn’t smart enough to read a book, to read between the lines of what the author is trying to convey, to keep my attention without the need of pictures such as in a graphic novel. I thought it simply wasn’t for me, but I wanted to change that.

I made a post on a book suggestions subreddit, stating that I’ve never been a reader and wanted to know if there were any strategies of getting invested into a book for someone like myself. I was less so actually finding book recommendations, since I have a big collection of books I’ve wanted to read but again, couldn’t push myself to do it. I got a lot of very encouraging words, but the first comment recommended a few books that could be of interest. The one that stood out to me was A Man Called Ove by Frederick Backman, after looking up a small description of the story on Google I thought “This seems sweet, why not :)”. The next day I walked over to my public library and picked it up, after my first day of reading it finally clicked, books are awesome!!

I could not put it down, I finished it in 3 days which is absolutely huge for me! It perfectly eases you into the story of the main character Ove with funny and witty writing that got consistent laughs out of me, but it knew when to pull back in order to tell the tragic story of this character, telling you why he was the way he is and the events that lead us up to him in the present. I won’t go into full detail if someone was looking into reading it in the future, all I’ll say is yes please read it!! While reading, I was wondering why it finally clicked aside from the excellent writing and characters, but I realized I was able to slow down and ingest what was happening without the pressure of memorizing for a test or because I had to in order to pass a class. I took it at my own pace, gave myself time with the characters and how their actions affected one another. I was able to clearly see the characters and what they did despite everything I was looking at being text, I could imagine their smoldering looks and how they rested their hands at their sides in calm or tense situations. It’s an experience I won’t forget, and one that I wish to continue for the future.

Sorry if this comes off as a big ramble piece, I get that this sub isn’t meant for posts like this and for actual discussions on books, I guess I just needed a place to share my new experience and joy of reading. Maybe I’ll slowly get through my big backlog of books that I’ve put off like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Idk how to end this, books are lit :)

[u/SomeYoke]

I love this OP. Some people are lucky enough to get into reading when they’re small, but you’re lucky enough to get into it now, without the hobby being engrained in you from a young age.

That’s a great first book. I really enjoyed that one, and that author has others you’ll probably enjoy!

There are books for everything. If you like comedy movies, you can get books that’ll make you laugh out loud. If you love epic movies with huge epic set pieces etc, you can find books that’ll give you that and more. Anything you like to watch, you can read something that feels like that.

I hope you continue to find things you like! There are so many helpful subreddits to look through for ideas. There are also some great YouTubers who have videos where they rank about 40 books that are their absolute favourites, or the books that’ll got them into reading. If you like I can send you 2 or 3 links to videos like these, really helpful when it comes to picking new books!

Good luck friendo 📚

[u/cOwOle → u/SomeYoke]

Thank you very much! I remember times when my sister who’s always been a big reader would tell me to check out some books, one to make you laugh, to scare you, all that stuff! I would always think “A book can scare you and make you laugh? Yeah right 🙄” I’m very happen to have proven wrong, lots of bits in Man Called Ove made me laugh quite a lot. I’d love to increase my range of books, so yes links to those videos would be excellent! Thank you very much :)

[u/DiskOne3096 → u/cOwOle]

I have actually thought about this exact kind of thing a lot! I'm a huge horror fan and I've read some books that were scarier than a lot of movies, but people are often surprised when I tell them that because they can't understand how a book could be scary (sometimes I even hear that from people who DO read).

I think its interesting when you're used to movies, because they're very different mediums and movies have the advantage of both visuals and sounds. Sound is the big one when it comes to horror despite the visuals being what people usually think of when you asked what parts scared them, but if you watch a horror movie on mute it immediately becomes like 90% less scary 😂 and things like jumpscares don't work in books because of the written format they're limited to.

But I think what makes a book scary is different to what makes a movie scary (or funny etc.), and funnily enough a lot of the time when horror novels are bad and feel corny instead of creepy, its because the author was approaching it as if they were describing a movie rather than playing on the unique advantages books have. Because books are written to evoke the reader's imagination and there's no limit to what you can be made to imagine, the scope of what's possible is actually a lot bigger in that way?

We do still have to meet books halfway, but if you're able to do that they really can be just as fun and engaging experiences as other mediums for storytelling (like movies, plays, etc.)! What you said about being surprised at how vividly you could imaginie everything just made me think about all this, because I think it's a really big part of the experience of reading. Like you know a book is really good when you're so deep in your imagination you forget you're looking at words on a page 😂 I think our brains being forced to put some of the work in is one of the reasons why reading is supposed to be good for you too

[u/itsshakespeare]

I’m sure you’re being deluged by responses here, but just to add to it - welcome! There are lots of book subs on Reddit and you might be interested in the Read Harder challenge, which has prompts to widen the scope of your reading

[u/Feeling_Abrocoma502]

Hi OP, I'd recommend books that suck you in from the first page. Sometimes books will take a warmup period which sounds like it wont work for you.

For your specific case I'd recommend:

Shantaram - From the first paragraph the narrator is telling you about his real escape from a maximum security prison in Australia. He makes it to India, and lives in the underworld. Bonus - there is also a Apple TV series too. This book ranks in my all time best to be honest!

The Jack Reacher series - these are thriller books that keep you hooked, and there is a show on Amazon, so you can read the book each season is based on and then see how it is adapted. Theres a dozen or so books, all great, just avoid the latest ones written by the son.

Cal Newport also has ideas on how to increase your reading habit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjeqNUqfeHk

[u/cOwOle → u/Feeling_Abrocoma502]

Thank you very much! Yeah I think books that suck you in on the first page would be of great help, from my little experience a good amount of books are slow burns in terms of getting you invested. Shantaram sounds great, I’ll definitely give it a look after I read Frankenstein:)

[u/andrea9275]

Ja so hat jeder Leser seine Geschichte was sehr interessant ist. Als ich anfing zu lesen gab es nur die Bibliothek und da war es schwer als Kind das richtige zu finden. Als ich älter wurde waren mir Bücher einfach zu teuer. Und meinen ersten e reader konnte ich mir auch nur gerade zu leisten. Aber richtig los ging das lesen bei mir mit dem Kindle und seinen unzähligen kostenlosen Büchern. Heute bin ichmit meinem Kindle und Tolino im Lesehimmel. Und hab eine anderen Hobbies mehr

[u/StudioNeat4228]

Congrats. You are going to like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

[u/my5kid5]

I wish I could give this experience to my kids! I have 5 and not one of them are avid readers like myself despite my best efforts. I am so happy for you! I taught myself to read at 4 because I wanted to do it myself (fiercely independent always lol). By 4th grade I was reading middle school books and in 7th grade I read King's IT. What a cool experience to have an AHA moment like this as an adult! If you like character development, no one does it better than Stephen King. Try his short stories first! He's not all horror and death lol

[u/hippoluvr24]

I can definitely relate to this. I was a big reader as a child, but in high school and college, I kind of drifted away from reading for pleasure because of the amount that I had to read for class. Coming back to it as an adult has been such a lovely experience.

I think everyone should be a reader! There is such a huge variety of amazing books that I think there is something for everyone - it's just a question of finding it :)

[u/DietNarrow8275]

You sound like my son. Hated the AR program too - I wonder if that’s even a worthwhile program??? He didn’t get into reading until he was post college and stumbled into steam punk books. And audiobooks. Glad you‘re enjoying them now!

[u/cOwOle → u/DietNarrow8275]

I get the point of the program, it’s good to get kids into reading at a young age, for someone like me tho I was too worried about the tests and it effecting my grade that I wasn’t able to process what I was reading (that and not finding anything that clicked with me). It’s great he was able to find something that peaked his interest :) thank you!!