Comment by smeej
1 month ago
I wouldn't say I feel guilt about all of these necessarily, but I do have a list of things I don't like that I would expect "someone like me" to like:
- The Lord of the Rings (try being a geeky Catholic who finds LotR tedious)
- Fantasy stories generally (though I love sci-fi)
- Chess
- Scrabble
- Rubik's cubes
- Video games
- Listening to music (I sing in a choir, but I don't like listening to music--any of it--even the kinds of music I like to sing)
Young Me, a voracious reader, was defeated several times by the LOTR books. To this day, I doubt I could force myself to read dozens of pages of Tom Bombadil singing about trees.
Also Neil Stephenson, come to think of it. I believe that I've absorbed enough of Snow Crash and Diamond Age via nerd culture to provide summaries of both but oof, I couldn't finish either of them.
I've never been interested in contrived puzzles like Rubik's cubes or even crosswords - but an actual real puzzle like "why does this call fail 1% of the time" could keep me enthralled for days/weeks until I either found the cause or was told to stop... Sadly no longer in that kind of work.