Hello friends! Im going on a trip to Paris in a few weeks, and so I was wondering if you guys have any favorite books set in Paris (or France in general)?

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...and this is a hill I will die on. I find the idea that classic literature is too difficult for most people to understand to be anti-intellectual and condescending. I promise you are not "too stupid" for classic books, I promise you can read them if you want. High school and even middle school students study classics, you don't need an advanced degree in literature to understand them. Will a classic be more difficult than a contemporary book? Possibly. Will you understand every little detail in it? Maybe not. But that's fine! That's how you learn new things! And if you want something explained, there are plenty of study guides and critical summaries and analyses and video essays and podcasts and so many other resources out there to help you bridge the gaps in your understanding. Some classics even come with annotations and explanatory notes from scholars and editors because they don't expect readers to fully understand the text on their own!

And not all classics are dense literary fiction if that doesn't interest you, there are classics in genres from sci-fi to fantasy to horror to romance and everything in between. I'm not trying to say you have to read classic lit to be a "real reader" (that's also a stupid idea), but I don't think people should preclude themselves from reading huge swaths of literature because they fear it will challenge them.

Are there any tropes you hate (or well, dislike) and prefer not to read, or absolutely won't read, books with them?

(No shade to anyone who does enjoy these tropes! They're just not for me 😅)

For me the trope I hate most is probably RH (reverse harem). Idk why but whenever I come across books with those I keep thinking about if the genders were swapped and then I can't stomach it.

I also hate love triangle tropes (unless they all end up together 😈). I think I started realizing this when I first got into Sarah Maas books; iirc (it's been a while) both TOG and ACOTAR's first books have love triangles. I think the only cases I enjoyed the way they were handled were in Cassandra Clare's books, in TDA and TID.

Edit - consider this thread closed as my question has been answered. Thanks for the contributions! Also I should add, I dnf books frequently, and I know, life is short so read what you love, but this time around I’m interested in completing a quest in a genre I love☺️.

I have a conundrum. I’m usually a huge thriller fan and enjoy most that I read (rating them at least 3 stars). I decided to started the thriller starter pack side quest and the first book I’ve chosen is hard to enjoy for me and it’s thick (400 page) with small font.

To get the final badge of course, I have to read them all. How do people who’ve completed side quests proceed through texts they don’t really like? I wouldn’t have chosen this quest if not for my already existing like/love of thrillers.

For those who read fantasy, do you like hard or soft magic systems better? I enjoy both but prefer mysterious, dangerous magic that isn't fully understood or explained. As long as it is internally consistent and the author doesn't stray into deus ex machina territory, that's my favorite.