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I wouldn’t consider a Marvel movie particularly “adult,” no. Anyway, every book written for an adult audience, over literally thousands of years, is “dry and bo
by emodendroket 3y ago
I wouldn’t consider a Marvel movie particularly “adult,” no. Anyway, every book written for an adult audience, over literally thousands of years, is “dry and boring”? At a certain point you need to look in the mirror.
- Spivak 3y agoThen name one, choose any book that would be totally unappealing to a teenager/early college (so no Dune, Hitchhiker's, Martian, Clockwork, GoT, American Gods, Good Omens) but is fun and exciting. There are books that are for everyone except young children, and there are books that are trying to appeal exclusively to adults. The former are great, the latter are a slog. I'm sincerely hoping to be proven wrong.
- emodendroket 3y agoI have no idea what your tastes are but I found both Journey to the West and the Odyssey to be very fun and exciting, with elements of what would appeal to someone about more kid-oriented stories (adventures, fantastical creatures, fighting), but written with a more mature audience in mind. Moby Dick is another I would put in this "tale of adventure" bucket but it can be polarizing with the info-dumps about whaling. If you want to try going in a totally different direction, I am a big fan of Abe Kobo's avant-garde work, such as The Box Man or the Ark Sakura. I guarantee it's unlike anything else you've read if you've avoided straying from the kiddie pool, playing with the whole structure of the novel itself and challenging your expectations constantly. If you want to try some nonfiction, I have rarely read a Paul Theroux travel book I was bored by and I think Ryszard Kapuscinski is also great.
- Ruthalas 3y agoCan I ask which translation of Journey to the West you read? I've been planning to read it, but there are a lot of options.
- ambrose2 3y agoI’m also curious about this
- emodendroket 3y agoAnthony C Yu's unabridged edition in four volumes on Kindle for me.
- Spivak 3y agoI liked the Odyssey, but I also read it in high school so I'm not sure if it counts. Journey to the West ordered! I can't make heads or tails of The Box Man so it doesn't seem like a good intro so Ark Sakura it is.
- emodendroket 3y agoWell, I don’t think teens are incapable of appreciating adult work. Hemingway made quite an impression on me when I was 16.
- plaguuuuuu 3y agoI feel like this just boils down to you liking certain books and not other books, where the other books tend to be preferred by adults and not younger audiences. /shrug I do think anyone can enjoy Dune. Although it's still essentially about coming of age, it has a compelling plot and universe, if you're into that sort of thing. But compare with one of my fave books, Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Main character is a middle aged guy whose life essentially starts unravelling. And it's like.. if you haven't yet gotten to that point in life where you can empathise properly with the characters and your sense of meaning of your own existence starts unravelling, it's not really going to make as much sense and maybe won't be quite as interesting or meaningful I guess? A bunch of crazy shit happens, sure, but not of the pew pew lasers and kicking people in the teeth kind. I do think I would've enjoyed it a lot as a YA but maybe not as much. And the level of writing is different, Murakami (as translated) writes very simply but it's much more complex in terms of the underlying concepts and it's not like you stop getting better at understanding shit once you hit 25 years old. So that's at least one illustrative example!