Weird question maybe but I find myself being so sensitive at times that I have to put down the book I’m reading and wait some time before I read again.
It can be for example when it all is looking dark and I don’t think thing are going to turn around. It’s silly I guess but I feel so overwhelmed and nervous that I need a break at times.
I’m reading the last chapter in Simon Scarrows book The honor of Rome. Reading the last chapters and I just know things are going to go bad. Or at least I fear it will so I have to take a break before reading again.
I know it’s silly but wondered if someone else felt the same at times.
That happened to me last week when I was reading Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. I reached a point where I thought, “This is going to be sad. Really sad.” I almost put it down, but I finished it. And I’m glad I did.
No Longer Human by Junji Ito (adapted from Osamu Dazai). The book was intense. I had to put it down often and was often left in a state of shock processing what I just read.
No, never
I get this but only with non-fiction. There’s a passage in Primo Levi’s autobiography of the Holocaust that describes a desperate mother asking the POW train engineer for water from the engine coolant for her dying child. Had to stop.
Ive done this and ive also done the opposite-read it all in one sitting because it was making me sick and I needed to just finish it.
I had to take breaks with memoirs for a geisha even though I was so enraptured by the prose because I was so sad. With lolita I finished it in one sitting because I was disgusted.
Additionally when I read poetry or some novels with nontraditional prose (the road is a really good example) I cant just finish it in one sitting. I get struck by how beautiful it is and need to take breaks to think about it.
My Dark Vanessa has given me the icks like nothing else I’ve read. 😣
I had to do this with Crime and Punishment. I started reading this in the second trimester of my pregnancy (during COVID lockdown) but I felt like the book was so intense and depressing i just could not bring myself to finish it.
Obviously hormones and lockdown may have been contributing factors but the book wrecked me
The Dante Club. Had to put it down a few times for intense drama, gore and melancholy. It’s riveting stuff.
When I read the Red Wedding scene in ASOIAF. I physically threw the book and had to take a long break (after first scanning ahead just enough to make sure it wasn’t a very detailed dream sequence).
I love feeling this deeply when I’m reading fiction but absolutely have to take a break when reading things like true crime and some biographies. I think it’s normal! It sounds like you’re empathetic and that’s a great thing.
Absolutely. The Gulag Archipelago comes to mind. Also Dan Carlin’s Blueprint for Armageddon though that was a long form podcast, but it felt more like an audiobook released in segments.
The death cure
I get that a lot. I have a rotation of light fiction, science fiction, non fiction, fantasy and cozies for the heavier books.
Yes! I do this with books and tv shows and often I don’t return to the show😅
I am currently paused reading. GRRM’s Fevre Dream. Paul Tremblay’s books, especially The Cabin at the End of the World.