Books Books for a non-reader

[Zeostar]

I hesitated to make this, but truthfully I have not read a book outside of a textbook since 9th grade. (And that book was Marley and Me) And I have not been an 'avid reader' since 6th grade. I would really like to get into the hobby of reading.

Are there any books recommendations that are good for easing into the hobby, or is it something you need to jump right into?

For more detail, I really like mystery and horror. Horror intrigues me because I don't know how a book could be scary. I like the Stephen King films, but without the visual effect I don't understand how it could be nearly as interesting.

Incidentally, the 'classic' novels are what turned me away. I was in a gifted literacy class, and we constantly had to pick classic novels and read them. Some of the selections were "Moby Dick", "Kidnapped" "War of the Worlds". I didn't enjoy them, and reading went from "fun" to "forced".

Length is okay too. I don't mind long or short. I would just really like an interesting plot to feel engrossed in.

 

[Arcaneum]

I hesitated to make this, but truthfully I have not read a book outside of a textbook since 9th grade. (And that book was Marley and Me) And I have not been an 'avid reader' since 6th grade. I would really like to get into the hobby of reading.

Are there any books recommendations that are good for easing into the hobby, or is it something you need to jump right into?

For more detail, I really like mystery and horror. Horror intrigues me because I don't know how a book could be scary. I like the Stephen King films, but without the visual effect I don't understand how it could be nearly as interesting.

Incidentally, the 'classic' novels are what turned me away. I was in a gifted literacy class, and we constantly had to pick classic novels and read them. Some of the selections were "Moby Dick", "Kidnapped" "War of the Worlds". I didn't enjoy them, and reading went from "fun" to "forced".

Length is okay too. I don't mind long or short. I would just really like an interesting plot to feel engrossed in.

Considering it's not something you actively do, I'd say starting with something smaller might be better I.e. less daunting, but regardless of size of the book grips you, the boo grips you!

With regards to your genres there... well Stephen King is my favourite author and that's because he is VERY good at planting that image in your mind etc. I definitely would recommend reading a few titles, namely Cujo, Christine and something like Skeleton Crew (his best works are much longer and might not be good to start off with).

Otherwise, Clive Barker is also a super good horror author and most of his notable works are very short too.

If you haven't already, it could be worth checking out the Reading Challenge thread too!

Always around of you want more recs or advice!

 

[baire]

I also think reading shorter novels at first might be beneficial, just because you can choose a wide variety of works to try and see what you like... for horror, "House of Leaves" by Danielewski is one I've heard consistently good things about but I've never read it myself so idk, and it is quite long.

novels have very different strengths when compared to films, so I think you should avoid trying to get a film-like experience out of reading. books allows for a very priviliged access to whatever the characters are thinking - a great example from Atonement by Ian McEwan, an eleven year old Briony thinks

She raised one hand and flexed its fingers and wondered, as she had sometimes before, how this thing, this machine for gripping, this fleshy spider on the end of her arm, came to be hers, entirely at her command. Or did it have some little life of its own? She bent her finger and straightened it. The mystery was in the instant before it moved, the dividing moment between not moving and moving, when her intention took effect. It was like a wave breaking. If she could only find herself at the crest, she thought, she might find the secret of herself, that part of her that was really in charge. She brought her forefinger closer to her face and stared at it, urging it to move. It remained still because she was pretending, she was not entirely serious, and because willing it to move, or being about to move it, was not the same as actually moving it. And when she did crook it finally, the action seemed to start in the finger itself, not in some part of her mind. When did it know to move, when did she know to move it?

...

A story was direct and simple, allowing nothing to come between herself and her reader—no intermediaries with their private ambitions or incompetence, no pressures of time, no limits on resources. In a story you only had to wish, you only had to write it down and you could have the world; in a play you had to make do with what was available: no horses, no village streets, no seaside. No curtain. It seemed so obvious now that it was too late: a story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it. Reading a sentence and understanding it were the same thing; as with the crooking of a finger, nothing lay between them. There was no gap during which the symbols were unraveled. You saw the word castle, and it was there, seen from some distance, with woods in high summer spread before it, the air bluish and soft with smoke rising from the blacksmith's forge, and a cobbled road twisting away into the green shade…

it's a cool passage because it highlights how directly you get to experience what the character feels, but also because it's deliberately wrong. it's pretty much guaranteed that the reader is going to have a different image of "castle" than the author, anyone else, or what is described on the page, and this disconnect in communication between your thoughts and everyone else's is one of the main themes in the book. I personally got into reading when I was upset with my life and read novels about escapism (e.g. "A Wild Sheep Chase" by Murakami) and the opportunity to explore my own thoughts was really satisfying. It's really difficult to gauge what could resonate with you, so my only real suggestion is to read a wide variety of works, not just from mystery and horror.

some books I think would work well for people wanting to get into reading might include:

A Wild Sheep Chase by Murakami (mysterious, short, accessible)
Concrete by Thomas Bernhard (short, funny, one of my personal favourites novels ever written)
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (short, classic hardboiled detective novel, somewhat similar to mystery)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (short, personally found it funny but ymmv)
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (long, a 'classic', watch this video and see if the premise appeals to you, this is another personal favourite of mine!)

 

[Hybrid Trainer]

Considering it's not something you actively do, I'd say starting with something smaller might be better I.e. less daunting, but regardless of size of the book grips you, the boo grips you!

With regards to your genres there... well Stephen King is my favourite author and that's because he is VERY good at planting that image in your mind etc. I definitely would recommend reading a few titles, namely Cujo, Christine and something like Skeleton Crew (his best works are much longer and might not be good to start off with).

Otherwise, Clive Barker is also a super good horror author and most of his notable works are very short too.

If you haven't already, it could be worth checking out the Reading Challenge thread too!

Always around of you want more recs or advice!

I read a couple of Stephen King books in high school and would also recommend them if you aren't feeling too daunted by a lengthy book.
Clive Barker is also a good option, not only for his more well known work (The Hellbound Heart, the book Hellraiser is based on) but he also has an anthology series called the Books of Blood so if you feel like you aren't gelling with one story you can just jump to the next in the book.

I also think reading shorter novels at first might be beneficial, just because you can choose a wide variety of works to try and see what you like... for horror, "House of Leaves" by Danielewski is one I've heard consistently good things about but I've never read it myself so idk, and it is quite long.

While this is a really fun read I'd advise against House of Leaves for a newbie reader. It's quite hard to get hold of, it doesn't really exist in ebook form because of the weird formatting that it has, and honestly it's quite hard to follow since it has you jumping between two-three different stories at a time because of the way the stories told.
If you're interested in a challenge and eventually having a quite pretty coffee table book though, I'd say give it a go.

 

[Zeostar]

Thank you for the posts and suggestions.

I decided to try "Charlotte's Web"...despite what I said about being turned away by classic novels, this doesn't look too bad at all. It's short, and if I don't like it I can always swap it for something else.

 

[Arcaneum]

Thank you for the posts and suggestions.

I decided to try "Charlotte's Web"...despite what I said about being turned away by classic novels, this doesn't look too bad at all. It's short, and if I don't like it I can always swap it for something else.

Ones like this which are shorter I feel are better when it comes to the classics - not too much space for storytelling fluff to get in the way. I hope you enjoy, be sure to let us know!

 

[Zeostar]

Ones like this which are shorter I feel are better when it comes to the classics - not too much space for storytelling fluff to get in the way. I hope you enjoy, be sure to let us know!

I read about 25 pages. I think it's pretty much what I was looking for. Not something 'super overly deep and serious', just something simple so I can ease into other books. I was tempted to start with Stephen King because I like his movies, but the last thing I want is to get turned off by something too long or convoluted. But it's still waiting for me when I'm ready.

 

[ElBurrito]

Lovecraft has some good sci-fi horror stories. There's numerous collections of his short stories, my favorite is the Necronomicon. Most of his stories aren't too long, though there's a couple that are quite lengthy. However, there is a lot of outdated words that just haven't been used since the 1930s, there's been a few times where I've had to stop reading and crack open a dictionary to verify that the word meant what I thought it did, so it may not be the best place to start if you don't read too often.

 

[Zeostar]

Ones like this which are shorter I feel are better when it comes to the classics - not too much space for storytelling fluff to get in the way. I hope you enjoy, be sure to let us know!

Quite funny. This is many months later but I completely dropped charolettes web and jumped into a 1150 page horror novel from Stephen King called "The Stand".

I was hesitant. I didn't think my comprehension would still be there, and that I would get upset. But nope, it's perfectly okay.

950 pages in, and I've really enjoyed myself.

 

[Arcaneum]

Quite funny. This is many months later but I completely dropped charolettes web and jumped into a 1150 page horror novel from Stephen King called "The Stand".

I was hesitant. I didn't think my comprehension would still be there, and that I would get upset. But nope, it's perfectly okay.

950 pages in, and I've really enjoyed myself.

Good! The book definitely has a really bad moment in the middle where you realise King has at this point not really like forwarded the plot and is forced to accelerate it, but the character-building and such beforehand means it at least transitions quite painlessly and ends up with an amazing end segment to the book!

 

[Duck]

If you're still taking suggestions, I'd recommend most things by Agatha Christie really.

It's said that she's only been outsold by two things: the Bible and Shakespeare, and while book sales aren't a great metric to say the least, her work is safely a staple of the mystery genre and is probably a good start.

Personally, I liked the books and I recall reading one or maybe two of them in one sitting one afternoon or two, so even adjusting by reading rate it shouldn't take too long. (The non-pocket book copies I have are around 250 pages in a tall-ish format, so they shouldn't be too big).

Other things in the mystery / suspense vein are Dan Brown works. While most lit snobs will turn their noses up to him, it's a perfectly readable mystery novel and most of the """major flaws""" come across less for those that don't have the habit of reading.