No, I am serious about this. I wish to get back into the learning of reading, but as a beginner I am repelled by the intense use of vocabulary, literary devices of classical literature books or intense and difficult-to-follow storyline of modern day fiction. I want to read a book that is clearly made with people like me in mind.

I’m not saying I want 10 second short paragraphs or extremely racist or bigoted comments to fuel my interest in reading the book. Though I rarely use social media, I do quite often look at memes, and they make me feel at home with how they are relatable and make use of clever wordings and phrases to express that one particular feeling. Same thing is seen in comments of meme forums where people come up with things to add to the humor of the original post or make it even better. I feel like this kind of expression could very well be possible to implement in a book in a textual medium while retaining the same amount of engagement and creativity.

I know my request may seem unnecessary, that I should quit bickering and just pick up a book and start reading it, and in reality I could by lending one from my family, however I wish to give this approach a chance as I am sure this situation must be faced by other people and someone could have a written a book to directly address these kind of people. I need a stepping stone to start my habit of reading books and I feel like starting from something I am already familiar with would greatly assist me.

I am not interested in any particular genre as of now apart from what I have expressed in the post so far. I could even go as far as to read an encyclopedia or an academic paper if the humor is engaging enough.

I feel that this topic of discussion is general, subjective and of help to others on the internet, which is why I decided to post it here instead of the dedicated books community.

33 points

You might consider books written with meme-like humor. Two that come to mind are The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (by Douglas Adams) and The Princess Bride (by William Goldman). Both of those books are relatively short novels, so they should go down easy.

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16 points

I’ll second the recommendation for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (by Douglas Adams).

It is very funny, with a zany sense of humor that is right at home in meme land. Many of the funny things I have read in memes and comments under memes are just quotes from that book.

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7 points

I auggest also any book from Terry Pratchett, if OP is into fantasy

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3 points

Some of the few books that had me laughing out loud.

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28 points

Repulsed by vocabulary, but writes a wall of text.

I’ve never read anything so fucking inane.

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18 points
*

I’m not feeling so vitriolic, but my sentiment is the same. This is almost a parody.

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7 points

I swear it wasn’t intentional 😓

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8 points

Don’t sweat it. Some people just like to hate on things. You’re allowed to ask question on an Internet forum dedicated to asking questions.

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6 points

With a limited vocabulary they needed more time to clarify their intent ig.

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19 points

Terry Pratchett disc world books are very funny and full of easy to understand jokes.

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13 points

But also full of slightly harder to understand linguistic jokes that may frustrate OP.

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5 points

I found with my kids they just didn’t get the reference and enjoyed what they understood. No frustration, just revelations when they read them again when older.

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16 points

“repelled by the intense use of vocabulary”

“this kind of expression could very well be possible to implement in a book in a textual medium while retaining the same amount of engagement and creativity.”

🤷🏻‍♀️

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6 points

No but really, Douglas Adams could be what you’re looking for, very funny stuff

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15 points

Books and meme humour feel like a very anachronistic combination

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7 points
*

The notion that books are “of the past” has done harm to many.

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1 point

I should elaborate that I meant printed books

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2 points

Anachronistic? They still write books today.

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