Jim Butcher has done TWO AMAs here the first AMA & the second AMA :) Here's a link to all of our upcoming AMAs

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If you struggle, an advice I got was to read the end and come back to the point where you stopped later.

People who know the end of a book are more likely to finish it.

Are you familiar with Greek tragedies? They are plays...

>"...in which the protagonist, usually a person of importance and outstanding personal qualities, falls to disaster through the combination of a personal failing and circumstances with which he or she cannot deal."

The purpose of these plays are to provide people with emotional experiences to draw from in their own lives. They often instruct on things such as how to navigate and find value in hardships or accept that one's fate may be outside of one's control. This is often intended to envoke "catharsis" or a release from strong negative or repressed emotions through empathy, excising metaphorical hypotheticals in a safe context, and other devices of story. Not a literary scholar so that may be off but the gist is right.

To provide a personal example in modern literature, I am fond of the novel A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. The thesis of the novel is >!trauma is not something you "overcome" or "resolve" in a traditional sense; it is either something you learn to live with...or you don't. Which is made apparent in 800+ excruciating pages of a character enduring some of the most awful acts of humanity imaginable. But there were some passages in particular about self harm that resonated with me because of how they reminded me of friends and lovers I have had with a history with self harm. It connected with me on a visceral level how, paradoxically, this destructive act could be a lamentable but necessary coping mechanism for these people in my life, just as it was for this character. I feel I had known that intellectually but had not felt it so vividly. Nothing before had made this make sense in the same way this book did for me. Indeed, it was partly because the tragedies were so exaggerated - almost cartoonish morose - that I feel this was an effective instruction.!<

To your question about what to do about this - at the risk of stating the obvious, you have two options. You either continue with these novels or else you read other stories. If you persist, I think having this recontexualization about why people read such stories and what is to be gained from them is a good start. May help to connect with other people to read along with (see r/bookclub or r/reading_buddies, perhaps) to hear their opinions and how it affects them. You could look up analysis of them as well to form a clearer picture of what the author meant to illustrate or how different parts contribute to a grander whole which you may otherwise miss. Or, you could take a break from such heavier arcs. Perhaps return to them at a later point when you have the emotional bandwidth to enjoy them. Or not. That is fine as well. When we consume art, we are satisfying an emotional diet. These tragedies afford audiences certain experiences which you may not be in need of or ready for at present. That doesn't make the stories wrong or you wrong for not wanting to partake in them. You are just reacting to different needs. In the same way someone who lives off carbohydrates might find themselves craving vegetables for the vitamins. Your reading experience is totally your own, for your own enjoyment. No right way to do it.

I remember reading The Beans of Egypt Maine years ago and thinking: these people are never crawling out of the hole they've dug. I did not want to keep going. I did finish it, but after that one I only finish books like that if there is something else to keep me going, like really good and witty writing, or some particular character that I just have to see through to the end. Otherwise, it's not for me.

Definitely don't start the web serial Worm then, it's about 1.8 million words of exactly that lol. That's actually a big part of why I like it and other books with the same premise- I like to feel sad and hopeless before the relief of a resolution, of a character persevering despite a hopeless situation. It's kind of like the slow treck up a rollercoaster ramp before the drop, you know?

Not saying that you should enjoy the same things I do, if you don't like it and don't want to read those books that's totally fine! But I think it can be the mark of a good story if it can elicit those strong emotions in you, and if you can bear them long enough to push through until the uplifting ending it's a really great sense of satisfaction!

That won't work if the ending is just heartbreaking.

I don't believe you have to force yourself toward an ending that will make you feel even worse than the book itself.

So, that's the point.

Well, in that case OP wouldn't have enjoyed it anyway, so it would save him the time and effort of following a character through all this hardship and have it all be for nothing.