Lapnova just came in from the library for me. Hoping it’s a good one. I don’t really know a single thing about.

The tone of OPs post is a bit questionable. But “this is so boring, nothing happens” is definitely an amateur review in the same way “exciting book, so much happens”

Sounds like you are describing fanfic.

1. Professors will often present their interpretation of a work as objective truth. This isn’t always the case. Nobody (not even the author) gets to definitively be the authority of deeper meaning. Your views are equally valid as long as you support them.

2. Analyzing classic books generally requires a pretty extensive knowledge of the time, place, culture, etc. that they were written in. See if you can make sense of something a little more modern.

This book is great on surface level. But it really breaks down in a number of ways if you try turn a critical eye towards it.

They way a book is marketed and shelved doesn’t change what is written inside. Not that goodreads should be the authority on anything, but it is tagged as YA on there.

When I think of YA it is mostly about the structure and style of writing. A book can have a bit of sex and murder in it but be written in a very YA manner. I’ve had this come up a few times recently. Books with distinctly adult themes so you can’t market them as YA, but they otherwise feel like they are written for teens.

They way a book is marketed and shelved doesn’t change what is written inside. Not that goodreads should be the authority on anything, but it is tagged as YA on there.

When I think of YA it is mostly about the structure and style of writing. A book can have a bit of sex and murder in it but be written in a very YA manner. I’ve had this come up a few times recently. Books with distinctly adult themes so you can’t market them as YA, but they otherwise feel like they are written for teens.

The time you spent together is what matters. The particular book and story aren’t really relevant.

My rating system has always been ‘If I could go back in time to before I read this book, would I recommend it to myself?’ yes/no

I don’t read book that I think I will hate.

I went into this book pretty much blind but with positive expectations. It just never gave me anything to care about. Engaging vibes and evocative prose was nowhere to be found. The characters all were weakly written. Everyone felt guided by the invisible plot hand in order to serve the narrative without any real desires of agency of their own. Which might be forgivable if the plot itself was something special, but it wasn’t. We spent so much effort jumping around between people, space, and time. After reading the final payoff tying everything together, my only thought was “huh, why do I care about any of this?”

Easier for me to identify books I do not want to read by their covers. Anything with vector illustrated people is a pass. Or anything where the authors name takes up 50% of the cover.

Do self help books really need to be read from front to back? It’s not like dipping out in the middle of a narrative. Self help books tend to only have a few paragraphs of info stretched out into an entire book anyways.

I just got back into reading over the past year or so. I made the mistake of starting with a few goodreads yearly award winners. Almost immediately killed my desire to read because I didn’t realize the demographic of the site was so strongly skewed. Nothing wrong with these people having a community, I just wish it was a bit more apparent for those who haven’t discovered it yet. Honestly I’m more interested in things rated 3.5 on goodreads, because all the 4-5 star books are generally duds for me.

You’re more likely to create a negative relationship with reading by trying to get her into books when she clearly shows no interest. Best you can do is passively expose her to content from the reading community and see if anything sparks her interest.

To be honest you read this book for the layers and layers of dense verbiage. Yes there is a story underneath. But if your whole goal is just to tease out the plot, you’re gonna have a bad time. It’s definitely unyielding in it’s prose and such not for everyone which is totally fine.