Is this just me but I’ll find it incredibly hard to find interesting books to read?

Mechaphobic

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I actually always really like the isekai genre just because it was so similar to how I did world building for D&D. In order to get the details I wanted in the various worlds I was building. I would create characters and throw them into the worlds in an attempt to exploit them. I have also just loved how things work in general.


I read series like release that witch, and how a realist hero rebuilt a kingdom. I loved seeing real blending of modern world and fantasy. I quickly realized I didn't like a lot of kingdom building novels, as they tend to be just dictators or tyrants. Very rarely do they have to start with like nothing and actually go through the process. They also do really poor research, and for people who like reading that is very sad.


My biggest pet peeve is when I see people implementing very real technology, with no idea how any of it works. It just feels so lazy.


Since the pandemic put an end to my D&D groups I decided to try writing the worlds I imagined.
 

UnratedX

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I have nothing much to add to this: your taste, and your time, are yours to spend.

However, calling A Song of Ice and Fire BORING ... is almost, almost, criminal. Incomplete, surely true. Boring? Nuh uh.

If you read it with care, you will find riches in the subtleties of dialogue, in the machinations of the characters, and the fascinating world he builds.

If he could only manage to complete it, I would call it the third greatest work of High Fantasy Fiction of all time. The first two, of course, being Lord of the Rings and The Dark Tower.

That being said, ASOIAF clearly is a thousand times better than any webnovel ever. Cheerios.

bruh. OP verbatim said they FIND IT BORING not that Asoiaf IS BORING or BAD but FIND IT BORING DUE TO PERSONAL TASTES YOU CANT CHANGE and THATS what gets u?? BRUH! :LOL::LOL: so what even if they thought ASOIAF is THE MOST BORING, ultra-over-sexualized garbage with characters from WAY different cultures who use the SAME cultural expressions in dialogue and its never gonna get finished because the author can ride those phat TV show royalties for life, who cares?? You cant fcking tell people what they CAN'T FIND BORING! :LOL: Nuh uh. What published fantasies are only yuri? That said, what the frick are you doing on a WN site if u hate web novels?

There are web novels a thousand times better than ASOIAF and any boring paperback fantasy ever because reading them SCRATCHES THAT ITCH peeps are BEGGING to get scratched that u will not find ANY WHERE else. Cheers :D
and web novels are free! Generally speaking, LOOKIN AT U QIDIAN COUGH COUGH
 

witch_sorrowful

Mmm, Monke.
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Nice bait language, but I am not falling for that.

ASOIAF is amazing. And just as I cannot change your tastes, you cannot change mine. If you want to keep on scratching your itch till it bleeds, it is your right.

But, just as everyone has a right to call ASOIAF boring in a PUBLIC FORUM, I too have the right of defending it. If for nothing but putting into perspective as to what people read. Webnovels get only a minute subsection of readers, and honestly I think there is a large scene of improvement here.

I see Webnovels as a medium, and not a genre. The genre's popular books may all correlate in some strange method, but that doesn't colour the medium. So, let's not circlejerk about webnovels, and have perspective.
I mostly have read them back in the days when I wasn't so into the anime world yet and I didn't know "better".
What you are probably going through is read fatigue.
That can happen because of not mix'n and match'n of things. Perhaps get a book that reads slowly - a book that stretches your imagination, or something like that. It can help. Perhaps change genres altogether?!

Know, I come without malice. It's great that you read so much, but getting shoehorned into one genre isn't ... exciting, you know? You can probably tell every twist and turn. Read something that challenges you - that grapples with you, that puts tension in you, and takes you to places you never thought were possible.

Some I'd recommend (I think you came here for recommendations?) are -
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

They are all relatively small.
Perhaps even Pullman's His Dark Materials, trilogy? But you might have read it. Also, Neil Gaiman? American Gods. Terry Pratchett's almost anything. These are all filled with a myriad of themes, tones, and ideas. I'm sure one of them will work.

If not, then read (gasp!) non-fiction?
 
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RavenWolf

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Nice bait language, but I am not falling for that.

ASOIAF is amazing. And just as I cannot change your tastes, you cannot change mine. If you want to keep on scratching your itch till it bleeds, it is your right.

But, just as everyone has a right to call ASOIAF boring in a PUBLIC FORUM, I too have the right of defending it. If for nothing but putting into perspective as to what people read. Webnovels get only a minute subsection of readers, and honestly I think there is a large scene of improvement here.

I see Webnovels as a medium, and not a genre. The genre's popular books may all correlate in some strange method, but that doesn't colour the medium. So, let's not circlejerk about webnovels, and have perspective.

What you are probably going through is read fatigue.
That can happen because of not mix'n and match'n of things. Perhaps get a book that reads slowly - a book that stretches your imagination, or something like that. It can help. Perhaps change genres altogether?!

Know, I come without malice. It's great that you read so much, but getting shoehorned into one genre isn't ... exciting, you know? You can probably tell every twist and turn. Read something that challenges you - that grapples with you, that puts tension in you, and takes you to places you never thought were possible.

Some I'd recommend (I think you came here for recommendations?) are -
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

They are all relatively small.
Perhaps even Pullman's His Dark Materials, trilogy? But you might have read it. Also, Neil Gaiman? American Gods. Terry Pratchett's almost anything. These are all filled with a myriad of themes, tones, and ideas. I'm sure one of them will work.

If not, then read (gasp!) non-fiction?

One thing. I understand that ASOIAF important fantasy book and it is probably masterpiece but for me it is boring as hell to read. I also hated most of characters and POV changes in it. The thing is, not every people has to like every masterpiece there is. For example I can't stand Casablanca (1942) movie at all. I don't really like Lord of the Rings books either while they are world's most important fantasy books. Harry Potter, I never could read it. The writing style didn't sink in me at all.

First and foremost I have always loved isekai even before that term become genre. That is what I like to read but those western portal fantasies rarely are what I'm looking for isekais. I know what I want to read and I find what I want from webnovels because there just isn't much isekai stories what I want to read in west.

I have read fair share of sci-fi, horror, history etc. I watched His Dark Materias TV-show and I liked it. Also I watched Shadow and Bone and Outlander (which is like isekai!) etc. but I'm not going to read them. And non-fiction, no thanks. I will read it only if there is nothing else in the world to read.
 
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i used to be like that before I found machine translated novels. while they're a headache at times, it broadened my horizons especially when i was too lazy to learn the language and too impatient to wait the TL. it's such a disappointment when the TL isn't actually much better than machines translation lul

after a while i got used to it, and some of the translation errors made for some really funny quotes. overall an actual translation is still better but as someone who don't have money to spare on novels, my options aren't really that many.

i just wish there are sites like mtlnovel for JP and KR novels, especially KR. a lot of KR shit are paywalled like hell, while on JP ones you can just go to syosetsu and use google translate.

for the rest, i just write them myself since it's just so darn niche. i know what i like, and going extra effort for my personal satisfaction is always worth it.
 
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Tyhond

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I don't know if this is wrong, but if you seem to be having a hard time finding good book to read, I was wondering if you can try to read this book and maybe give feedback on it. It seemed to be very good for what I seen because of the positivity.

The Final Boss Reset You! | Scribble Hub

And if you don't want to, that is fine! ^-^
 

Snusmumriken

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I love all kinds of fantasy. I especially like to read isekai fantasy and currently my favorite subgenres are LitRPG, yuri fantasy and gender bender (MTF). I also watch anime a lot. I have been wondering this for some time now but, is this just me, I find it incredibly hard to find interesting books to read. I mean those “professionally” published books that you can find from Amazon. Instead, for the last two years I have read almost exclusively webnovels from different sites like HS, RR and NovelUpdates etc. And I have read a lot and there is a huge backlog of interesting webnovels to read. I have tried to read “real” books but most of the time I just get bored and drop them halfway. I have in GoodReads currently 25 books marked as “Currently Reading” and I find them hard to finish.

For example I have read these hype books: The Priory of the Orange Tree, Dungeon Born and Best Served Cold and I don’t seem to get from them the same enjoyment that I get from reading webnovels. Many “real” books seem to try to be something like A Song of fire and Ice (adult) or The Twilight Saga (YA) which I just find boring. It is super rare to find interesting yuri/lesbian fantasy books, LitRPG or Isekai books. Especially yuri/lesbian fantasy books all seems to be more like something what Disney would write. Also it seems like professional western writers, game devs nor Hollywood has not noticed how popular isekai theme is. It is impossible to find a good modern isekai book from Amazon (excluding light novels).

Of course this just might be that I just can’t find interesting books to read because you can’t search books with tags like SH has. It is really hard to find books to read and all these hype mainstream books are all what you find when you try to search. But still, it seems like webnovels have something that “real” books lack and I can’t put my finger on it and figure out what. Books just seem to be dull somehow maybe because they are geared toward the mainstream or something?

So this is my own opinion and in no way aimed at you specifically. Simply trying to look at the genre as a whole.

Webnovels are addictive. Just as litRPG are. Webnovels, by the factor of their short chapters, end up with a lot of quick reward hooks to keep readers engaged and keep reading. Same with litRPG numbers. Each time you read that "level up" or "+x stat" your brain releases happy chemicals. So as you read more and more of low effort - quick reward style your brain gets used to it. It becomes normal.

And that is why mainstream media becomes boring. There is way more effort needed (more to read before a scene or an arc resolves) and the rewards seem lacklustre compared to quick and sharp +skill / +stat / +level. And because your brain already adapted to a new pace it sees it as too much work too little to gain.

Once again I am not saying they are bad, they are like sweets. Nothing wrong with eating them, but they might make other dishes feel bland in return.
 

sabazurc

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While genres you like are different from mine I agree about some books. A lot of books I've seen on amazon seem to worse than some novels online. I remember reading one of them, I think it was called Dragon Blade...it was horrible, even though it had pretty good ratings. Tried some others and they were meh. I had to ask for some recommendations on Reddit to get to some good books. Legend Of Drizzt was one of the good ones I found and really liked, it has nothing to do with gender bender or yuri though.
 

TheTrinary

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I have a lot of friends that read, so I normally get pretty good recommendations from them. You can also find a book reviewer that you have overlapping tastes with. That is what they are there for. I like Daniel Green on youtube for instance. (for books)
 

MarekSusicky

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I love all kinds of fantasy. I especially like to read isekai fantasy and currently my favorite subgenres are LitRPG, yuri fantasy and gender bender (MTF)
Are you me? :blobrofl: I love isekai-genderbender-fantasy-LitRPG-yuri stories, and I could read them all day (+ all night and be late). I know your pain, once you find your niche, it is hard af to read that story about a soldier who just returned from Afghanistan and is trying to reconnect with her friends. I get it, it is supposed to make me feel something, educate me about something else ... and it does, but not in a way my genre does it. That stuff just clicks.

That was the reason I started to write my story - The Exploiter. I wanted to share yet another quick fix for people who crave the genre, so am I the drug produccer now? Hah, that's only temporary anyway, I can't read enough of my niche. I'm never bored of it, dunno why. I remember my first litrpg story till today - ah, the sweet Russian LitRPGs... Barliona is my home.
 

hyperkvlt

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More like it's hard to find ones that click well for you. I often found myself randomly searching stories here and NU but hardly found ones that clicks well with me, I found some I like but they mostly ended in an eternal hiatus for most part.

And the searching gets even harder especially right after you finished some stories you like, you'll likely find it much harder to find ones that at least just as good.... mostly because you already got too used to their writing style or got too attached to some character.
 
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