You want some adult books that arent full of negative crap go read some Terry Pratchett. All my life these are some of the only ones that make me laugh out loud consistently while still having a great plot, characters, and just overall excellent writing in so many ways.

Peter was not quite like other boys; but he was afraid at last. A tremour ran through him, like a shudder passing over the sea; but on the sea one shudder follows another till there are hundreds of them, and Peter felt just the one. Next moment he was standing erect on the rock again, with that smile on his face and a drum beating within him. It was saying, ‘To die will be an awfully big adventure.’

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie. Kids’ books are rad.

I’m an adult and proud that I don’t read this nonsense anymore. But what is the book where there is a magic tree house ? just so that I don’t read it mistakenly

You are reading the wrong adult books if that is your take away from it.

Someone needs to read better adult books.

I recently read Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea books, really interesting in that first half are kids lit and the second half were written 30 years later for a grown audience.

Best of both worlds! Though I did find the kids books way more fun.

High school English classes kind of beat the habit of reading out of me. I mean first of all there was this sense of new = not valid; To Kill A Mockingbird was the newest work of literature I studied in high school, written in the 60’s about the 30’s, everything else was 19th century or older. The Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare, Poe, the goddamn Bronte’s.

I stopped going to book stores. I stopped going to the library. Adult reading is like rubbing wood chips in your eyes. It’s dry and awful.

My grandmother handed me a book. A paperback novel called Utopia by Lincoln Child. It’s a kind of whodunit mystery thriller set in a futuristic theme park, and the main character has a teenage daughter who has an mp3 player. And that caught me off guard. Because I was a teenager with an mp3 player. This book was new. It was written by someone who was still alive, about characters who were my age and my generation. And the book was kinda okay.

I miss my gramma.

This is why I read genre fiction rather than literary fiction. Sure, you and your book club can look down on me but until you’re reading a book that isn’t a variation on a theme of “unsuccessful professional moves back to coastal small town to look after their mother who has dementia”, yous can all get to fuck.

I read mostly three things: fanfics mostly on My Little Pony, literature for degree and scientific papers(mostly unrelated to degree).

Stop shaming people about reading kids’ books.

The kids can have those books back when you’re done and not one minute sooner.

Sounds like someone is shaming people who like adult books, rather.

This is basically the “everybody secretly likes pop music” reverse snobbery angle. It’s so difficult to imagine that other people have different tastes from you.

I like the take that science fiction and fantasy is just a better form of fiction because you could take literally any fiction story about a mopey 30 year old who has to take care of their sick parent and a science fiction story has the potential to write an equally compelling story except this time there’s a killer robot on the loose or they’re on Mars or something.

All good stories are human stories, even science fiction. There’s nothing inherently better about setting your story in the “real world”.

You want a sad book? Mr. Frumble, from that same worm driving an apple book, is a tragic character. In a single day the poor guy has tragedy after tragedy, probably costing him millions, and making him hated by his entire community. There’s no relief. There’s no mercy. His life is chaos.