Since my girlfriend recently got a lot more time she told me she'd like to try reading some more. Problem is she doesnt really know where to start and i feel like i can't help her all that much because our tastes are really different. She's looking for something that's not to hard to read, not some horrible YA stuff, not to depressing.. Something that's kind of cozy but will also evoke at least some thought. I tried giving her The Hobbit, which she thought was cozy, but the fantasy turned her off a little.
What books could spark an interest in reading? I was thinking some stuff by Jane Austen or the Brönte sisters?
give her franny and zooey
>>7536273
The Bees - Laline Paul
Watership Down
Duncton Wood
Pillars of the Earth
Try one of these, my other half has read these and liked them. She also likes social history stuff and there are a lot of popular chinese female authors writing these sorts of things. I cant think of any others off the top of my head, if you want more post and i will look later/tomorrow at what we have if I remember.
>>7536304
Thanks! Watership Down was a good recommendation!
Vonnegut desu
>>7536273
Plath and Atwood come to mind.
Just give her the entry level stuff. 1984, Fahrenheit 451, any Vonnegut, Catcher in the Rye, etc. Anything they might assign to high schoolers in a decent English class is probably going to be fine.
>>7536751
Upon reflection, those may not have been great suggestions if depressing literature bothers her. But whatever, you get the idea. Try Great Gatsby and talk to her about it while she's reading it to make sure she gets all the important stuff going on.
Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta is great. YA that won the Printz award
>>7536273
Do not give her the bronte sisters. You should give her something poetical and a bit frilly but that contains food for thought as you said like Hyperion by Friedrich Hölderlin
Try some comedy from the entry-tier guide, then when she's ready for nonfiction give her The Ego And His Own (make sure it's His Own, not Its Own, that's the better translation.)
"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief." - Franz Kafka
