That makes sense, plenty of people won’t continue a series but few will read book 3 without having read the first two! Though publishers nevertheless put out so many series that I assume they must get more overall sales anyway when seeing the sequels around causes more people to buy book 1.

Oh yeah, easier to do with an established fan base. If Morris (a woman btw) can make it work that’s more impressive since she only got 1-2 trad pubbed. Though still has the benefit of the publicity from those 1-2 I guess.

Wait, so this is a search to find the lowest rated books on the site?

English has some androgynous names, but often what you see is initially male names being colonized for women. Robin is one of those, a more and more female name as time goes by.

In the case of this author though it is a pen name (real name Megan Lindholm) and I am sure she chose it deliberately. She started using it at a time when women writing epic fantasy got little traction, and the first trilogy she wrote with it was in the first person from a male protagonist to boot. Her books with the pseudonym did far better than the ones published under her real name.

Depends on length, whether written by the author or an academic, and the purpose for which they were written. Those long academic essays at the beginnings of classics, absolutely not, they’re often pretentious and irrelevant and also spoil things I’d rather discover organically. A short piece by the author at the beginning, yeah I’ll read that first because that’s as the author intended.

Actually yes, there is a subject I won’t read a book about and this is it!

I’ve tried it, it was horribly upsetting and depressing. I suppose for some people it’s encouraging because the characters keep going and that’s resilience, but to me it’s just awful.

I feel like Vargas Llosa has included most of the stuff in this thread in his work! Feast of the Goat includes both detailed rape of a minor and torture. He’s written another one all about violence at a military school.

Vikram Seth is supposed to be publishing a sequel to A Suitable Boy, entitled A Suitable Girl…. it’s been on hold for years but I’m still holding out hope it’ll be released!

Detailed depictions of torture are the one thing I personally would like to see authors stop doing altogether! Honestly, I don’t even want the torture methods described, that’s enough detail to get into my head and lodge there.

I always feel like rape is the first/most common answer to these things. And it’s such a complicated topic.

First and foremost of course, all readers should take care of themselves and no one should feel pressured to read something they think will be bad for them, or to read on in something that is bad for them.

Second, I think it’s precisely because rape is so common that depicting it in fiction is so important. Many sexual assault survivors, as well as loved ones of survivors and just people preoccupied with fears of rape, find these books incredibly important for healing, connection, and understanding.

Third, obviously none of those goals can be met if the author isn’t approaching the material respectfully, with the understanding that an appreciable portion of their audience will have been sexually assaulted themselves. I’m fortunate enough that I haven’t, and I don’t mind depictions as long as they’re done well, but I draw the line at writing that seems to excuse or glorify rape or use it as cheap titillation—at this point I’ll tend to avoid male authors depicting male-on-female rape altogether. It’s not that it can’t be done well, I’m sure, but I also don’t think I’ve seen it. With female authors I rarely see those problems.

But I’ll still generally put down a book on sample if it begins with the rape—there’s a sense in which, not yet knowing or caring about the character in question, it automatically feels like these scenes are there for cheap shock/titillation.

If you’re still interested in something like that, you might try Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller.

Ha yeah I hate scatological descriptions in books as well! I don’t know why but there’s something about anything involving bodily fluids where it’s so much more gross when it gets put into words. Like sure, I have bodily functions too but I definitely don’t want to read about them in books regardless.

I’ve definitely read while walking on the treadmill, pacing in the house and walking outside. Really not that difficult as long as you’re able to multitask okay. I wouldn’t be too worried about reading while walking outside as long as you aren’t in an area with lots of cars or crime etc.—on a walking path or a quiet residential area it’s just fine! I’ve seen other folks do it too.

It took me several tries to get into Midnight’s Children. Once I did, I read it pretty quickly and wondered what the trouble had been. The beginning wasn’t hard to read so much as, for me, it didn’t immediately inspire investment, but I did ultimately get engaged with the story.

Shalimar the Clown, on the other hand, I found accessible from jump. That one was great, if disturbing.

Yeah the whole thing does seem a bit silly to me. Even if we take it as colloquial rights, as in, “stop giving people a hard time for doing this,” I feel like the right to DNF is the only one on the list that anyone would even give a hard time over. I’d probably fill in the rest with stuff about people’s right to have their own opinions and interpretations which may differ from the author’s, etc.

Why the 100 year mark? I presume you haven’t been alive and reading adult literature for 100 years. There are far newer works that have entered the cultural zeitgeist to the point that it’s hard not to be spoiled just by living in the world (think Harry Potter or Twilight). There are far older works that most people don’t know—I doubt the average person on the street could tell you the major plot points or ending of a single work by George Eliot, let alone, say, George Gissing (perhaps my personal favorite Victorian novelist!).

I think it’s not only not wanting to be labeled, but recategorizing the meaning of the behavior in general. Even if you live in a liberal area and nobody would think less of you for it, you maybe don’t want to give a false impression about yourself/your friendships—least of all to your friends who now might worry you’re coming on to them or crossing boundaries if you try to hold hands or something!

Yeah I agree, I think our problem is that in our culture (by which I mean modern American) we read all physical affection as sexual, therefore people tend to avoid physical affection in relationships that aren’t sexual. That’s actually not great for psychological health though, and not the norm globally/historically.

Although, I’ve always understood “bromance” as platonic, just a shorthand for “male friendship story,” and so to me the coinage is a positive thing because it recognizes that these relationships have value and are worth depicting in media. (I wish we had a similar word for women.) If it was actually meant as gay I think it would just be called a “gay romance” rather than suggesting that they are each other’s bro.

That's fair. I do welcome a preface in a novel that requires cultural translation, though ideally it shares the background without spoiling the entire plot!

I am intrigued by these examples, in the abstract they don’t seem to me like it would work at all. If you can’t figure out the focus of the plot or the protagonist’s motivation from the book itself, it seems like a preface trying to explain it would just draw attention to how bad the book is.

This perspective confuses me. How many books you have not read could you describe the entire plot and ending of?

A few, no doubt: a handful of cultural touchstones, books especially popular in your circle that you’ve never actually read, anything you’ve already seen a screen adaptation of.

Now make that list and compare it to the many thousands of books 10+ years old that currently exist. I don’t care how old a book is, unless it’s Romeo and Juliet level of cultural penetration, most people who haven’t read it won’t know the details.

I don’t know, I usually read these after finishing a book but most of the time they just seem like bloviating without having any real point. It’s rare they actually bring great insights or perspective.

I definitely get this. While I’m not immune to the desire for comfort reading, I often like to read something that puts my problems in perspective.

Yep OP, my experience is quite similar. Read exclusively fiction as a kid, teen and through my early 20s. In my mid 20s I realized nonfiction could be just as compelling, and my nonfiction intake has increased steadily since and some years been the overwhelming majority of my reading. This year I think I was around 50/50.

But while that looks even, I do find that it’s much easier for me to find nonfiction I’ll appreciate. A good writer on a topic I’m interested in, and haven’t read about this particular aspect of before? Most likely I’ll find it worthwhile. There’s just a lot more that can go wrong with fiction—every book is a leap of faith. I like reading a balance but I would guess my average rating for fiction is appreciably lower at this point. Although some of this is probably still my being somewhat newer to nonfiction. The more you consume of something the pickier you tend to be, and I am seeing myself becoming more discerning with nonfiction and DNFing more often as time goes by.

Definitely! I can attest that knowing about politics and governance as a fantasy fan is almost as bad.