I’m not enjoying the books I am reading

[AnnotherReader]

I am not enjoying the books I am reading at the moment. I have read 38 books so far this year and only 2 have been 5 stars and one of them was a reread.

I have been through all my favourite books and picked out common themes. Can you recommend me any books based on my likes/dislikes below. I have also listed some of my favourite books and how they fit with the list.

likes:
time period 1800-1939 (either written in this period or more recent books set in this period)
rural or wild setting
a book within a book or books to do with books/stories/reading
pirates/books set on ships
romance
adventure
magic
crime especially golden age
epistolary novels
the chosen one trope

don’t like:
thrillers
literary fiction
smut/ too much sex

favourite books:
Emma by Jane Austen (time period, romance, rural setting)
Bath Tangle by Georgette Heyer (time period, romance, rural setting in part)
A Month in the Country (time period, rural setting)
The Reader by Traci Chee (rural setting, book about a book, adventure, pirates/ships)
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (book within a book, romance)
The Documents in the Case by Dorothy Sayers (epistolary, crime, time period)
Dangerous Liasions (epistolary, romance)
The Liveship Traders trilogy by Robin Hobb (ships, pirates, adventure, some romance)
Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell (time period, romance, rural setting)
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (time period, magic)
Harry Potter (magic, the chosen one)
The Famous Five by Enid Blyton (rural setting, adventure) - I loved these books as a child and have never managed to find the equivalent adult adventure books

I have read all of Jane Austen, Georgette Heyer, Agatha Christie, the Brontes, Elizabeth Gaskell and am currently working my way through the rest of Robin Hobbs Realm of the Elderlings books.

If you have read all this, thank you, as you can see from my favourite books they don’t have to include everything on my likes list but most have at least 2. Please give me some recommendations for other books I might like.

The Snow Child - Eowyn Ivey
The Giver of Stars - Jojo Moyes
Stardust - Neil Gaiman
Affinity - Sarah Waters

I think they get better and better. And love them. But honestly, if you didn't enjoy the first one they probably just aren't for you.

Laura Purcell - rural and gothic, bits of magic
Joanna Cannan's crime novels are quite funny and I think are from the Golden Age (not Joanna Cannon, they are different)
I've enjoyed a couple of Joan Smith's Regencies - not overly sexy but fun.

And I really liked A Lady's Guide to Fortune Hunting, and Mia Vincy's Longhope Abbey books. I can't recall if they were sexy or not since I usually just skip the sex scenes (no I'm not 85)

Maybe Literary fiction is a bad description, I consider classics to be different to literary fiction - I mean modern prize winning books which are written to experiment with a new writing style or to highlight an issue rather than tell a good story. Books that jump forwards and backwards in time or keep hinting about a secret but won't tell you what it is until the end of the book.
Authors like Bernardine Evaristo, Sally Rooney, Zadie Smith or Kazuo Ishiguro.
I didn't like Wide Sargasso Sea which I would class as literary fiction and I think that Possession and The Name of the Rose are both too literary for me.

You might like the Rivers of London series - magic & crime but it’s set it modern times.

@SomethingFun I loved this series .

I have just finished “Babel: An Arcane History”by RF Kuang which is a historical fantasy set in 1828.

@Glockamorra I forgot to add that the only books from your list I have read are Dorothy Sayers, I have read most but not all of them, I am working my way through them all.

I will add all the others to my list.

Thanks everyone for all the recommendations, I am going to spend the evening looking up all the ones I haven't read on Amazon and picking a few to buy to read on holiday in a few weeks time.

I already own a few of the books mentioned so I will start of those when I have finished the book I am currently reading. Although I am saving The Dark is Rising until winter.

What a good thread for ideas! I came on to suggest the Temeraire books, the Dark is Rising and the Magpie Murders but I am busily jotting down everyone else's ideas!

You could try Alexandra Walsh, they’re time slip novels, a mix of historical fiction and modern day.

Stacey Hall has written a couple of good historical novels.

Thursday murder set
Where the crawdads sing
Rosie Archer
Dilly court
Ken McCoy
Annie Murray
Katie Flynn
Josephine Cox
Dorothy koomson

Yes, The Franchise Affair is a great one to start with. A well to do mother and adult daughter are accused of kidnapping a servant girl and holding her against her will in their attic. Very of its time. Miss Tey had all sorts of issues with working class people, Irish people, working women...the list goes on! But great plotting and pacing.

Brat Farrar and Miss Pym Disposes are also both excellent.

Seconding Temeraire and Sarah Waters.

One that no one else has recommended is To Say Nothing Of The Dog by Connie Willie. Very light comedy time travel mostly set in the late Victorian England of The Importance of Being Earnest

The chronicles of Ixia by Maria v Snyder -Magic
The Shell seekers by Rosumunde Pilcher -historical
The house at Riverton by Kate Morton
anything by Diane Chamberlain
and bit of a wild card
The clan of the cave bears by Jean m aeul. It’s a series of books about Neanderthal man! Pretty random I know. It was suggested in the book club that I went to and I thought urgh I don’t fancy that! But just wow I devoured the whole book! You know it’s a good book if you even take it to the loo with you 🤣 I literally couldn’t put it down.

Circe by Madelaine Miller - not the time period you asked for but brilliant
The Night Circus by Erin morgernstern
How to Stop Time by Matt Haig

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - epistolary, set during and after WW2

OP you could read the first of the Dark is Rising books (Over Sea, Under Stone) now - it’s set in the summer, on a coastal holiday. But YY to reading the eponymous book in winter, it’s so atmospheric and evocative. I’m part of a FB group that does a “read along” each midwinter.

Where the Crawdads sings - came to my mind. Some beautiful descriptive passages.

Seven Sisters series - loved this series. Set in modern times and past.

Tarka the otter
All creatures great and small
Ring of Brightwater

• some real life stories set around nature

Robert Harris - superb books written in different historical periods.

If you like Agatha Christie, I can’t recommend Ngaio Marsh enough - and there’s about 30 of them!
have you tried Agatha’s autobiography and “Come tell me how you live?” Both are amazing.
Elizabeth Peters is also great for crime-of-an-era.
seconding or thirding Rivers of London too. I think of them as Potter with grown ups.

I don’t think I’ve seen Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield mentioned yet. It is historic, rural, a bit magical and is partly about storytelling.

Have you read 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff? It’s historic (although begins 1949), about books and epistolary.

Also agree with The Snow Child, The Cazalet Chronicles and many of Sarah Water’s books.

Yes Joan Smith is good fun. Loads of her books are free to read on Open Library. (I spend hours unearthing out of print gems on there!)

I agree Mia Vincy is very enjoyable, I read her via Kindle Unlimited.

Jane Dunn (KU) is very well written. Her two Regency novels are An Unsuitable Heiress and The Marriage Season.

Fran Smith's Victorian/Edwardian Vita Carew books show promise. Her heroine is a would-be medical student living in Cambridge with the odd bit of sleuthing on the side.

Recently I discovered Beth Brower, The Unselected Journals of Emma M Lion. Also on Kindle Unlimited but I intend to buy them in paper form so I can lend them out ;-) Hard to describe - written in diary form, they are set in a slightly unusual Victorian London. Chock full of odd characters and wittily narrated. Recommended!

We have very similar taste OP, you liked the books I suggested, I really like the books you have said you like, and I really didn’t like the first St Mary’s book either, and haven’t read any of the others. I did like Possession though.
Have you read The House in the Cerulean Sea? It’s where my user name comes from.

Enjoying this thread - I like many of the same books as you OP (Strange and Norrell is my favourite book and nothing has ever come close to matching it). I'm also in a bit of a rut, so have read with interest. I really enjoyed Strange the Dreamer, so that's a really good place to start.

My suggestions!

Rotherweird trilogy - Andrew Caldecott
The Kingdoms - Natasha Pulley
Blood and Sugar/Daughters of Night - Laura Shepherd-Robinson
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Quick - Lauren Owen
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock - Imogen Hermes Gowar
Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy - Laini Taylor
The Haunting Season (short stories)
The Starless Sea - Erin Morgenstern
Gillespie and I - Jane Harris (also Observations)

Just realised that The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock has sex - maybe not that one! Although it is very good.

Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray

P. G. Wodehouse. His Blandings novels are set in an idyllic rural setting. In fact, people have described Blandings as 'Eden'.

The Sherlock Holmes books (try listening to them on audio. Stephen Fry has recorded quite a few. My greatest pleasure in life is laying in a hot bath listening to Fry read Holmes and Wodehouse).

M. R. James: Ghost stories (wonderfully evokes late Victorian/Edwardian Britain – watch the Mark Gatiss documentary on him on Youtube)

Thomas Hardy? Jude is a bit bleak, but his short stories are lighter

William Morris? He was late Victorian, and wrote some magical, otherworldly books

My favourite George Orwell novel is Coming Up For Air, which is set in the 1930s but is about a man dreaming of his idyllic Edwardian boyhood in a small English village

C S Lewis: Ransom trilogy (sci fi type novels, but full of magic – in the final one the wizard Merlin appears)

G. K. Chesterton: Father Brown series

Agatha Christie? Dorothy L Sayers?

Have you tried C. S. Forester? I guess the other obvious writer about the sea from that period would be Joseph Conrad

Laurie Lee: Cider with Rosie

Oh, and Ronald Blythe's Akenfield. A wonderful collection of interviews with people in Suffolk. Many of them recall life in their village in the 1890s and 1900s. A fascinating and beautifully written book.