Oh my gosh I LOVE Kristin Lavransdatter! I just reread it last year. To answer your question, no I don't feel the same way when reading books - if I liked it enough to reread, then I really really liked it, but I don't usually have a strong emotional reaction. With KL specifically, I was hugely judgmental of her when I first read it when I was 23 (although I very much enjoyed the book). Now that I have my own marriage and child and life, I still felt that I would have made vastly different decisions (I didn't think Simon Darre was that bad of a catch lol, even at 23), but I came to her story with a very sympathetic heart this time around. If I feel lost, it is after reading, unable to move on to anything else for a few weeks because nothing can measure up.

Personally I can't listen while driving or working out unless I'm already very invested in the story. Especially driving since I'm so focused on the road and what the other cars are doing. My husband listens to books while cooking, and I can't do that either.

Like another comment said, try doing mundane things. I can walk around the neighborhood while listening. Sometimes I fold laundry or do very very boring chores. I can't multitask with my thinking and have just embraced it.

Also - I don't know if this is your problem, but I will mention it in case it helps - I get bored to tears listening to things at 1x speed. I bump up the speed on audiobooks to 2x and that help keep the story moving fast enough that I stay focused.

I love librarything lol. I use it strictly to keep track of my books and don't pay attention to the graphs, recs, or anything.. I find books easier to add and catalogue on that site. I like to tag them, too; I don't enjoy tagging things on goodreads (obviously I use goodreads too, but don't enjoy it). I also like that librarything is less Social.

My mom and I were just talking about how much we hate rummaging through second-hand or discount stores, and would rather pay full price. She mentioned discount stores like Ross or second hand clothing stores, and I mentioned used bookstores. I think some (many?) people love the thrill of the hunt and enjoy having a pre-loved item with history. /r/books definitely makes me feel like the minority here. Otoh I don't mind a well-curated used bookstore, preferably with a selection of new books - several bookstores in San Francisco have this happy medium.

I tend to read books as a whole and don't consider the individual chapters, although maybe this is my sign to start looking at the chapter as its own thing.

I don't know about best of all time, but I remember being really moved in Rabbit, Run by John Updike, when we finally see his wife's perspective. Throughout the whole book, we kind of hear from every character, but we only see Jan through Rabbit's eyes (and it's not flattering). Then when we see her on her own and the terrible climax of the book happens, I felt like I understood exactly how she had ended up in that spot, and felt empathy for her.

Read however you want. I'm the opposite and tend to forget what has happened if I read that slowly. Also I risk losing interest and not finishing it at all. So I speed read and listen to audiobooks at double speed. Is that a bad habit? Don't know, don't care.

I should have double checked because I did think maybe I missed something in the book too, but had hate-read it so fast (and obviously a while ago) and was so excited about an opportunity to vent that I just ignored the instinct to double check.

OMGGGG I mixed up my books!! Haha! What did I read... Oh shit, It's Edie Richter is Not Alone; I had to check my goodreads. Thanks for setting me right on that! Apologies to everyone.

SPOILERS ABOUND (for a completely different book, sorry everyone!!!)

I hated that book too. I actually hate-read it to the end and ... imo it never redeems itself. Eleanor Oliphant makes no sense as a character. One of the pleasures of reading a book is getting inside a character's head, but I felt completely outside of her mind, watching her make weird, senseless decisions, for seemingly no reason, with no insight from Eleanor herself or any narrator or anything. The whole point of the story, I guess is that she murders her father... and then is wracked with guilt. Just, what?? And people are saying she's flawed but believable? No one does what she did. Maybe like one person somewhere did something like it once.

The part that really mystified me somehow was when she housesat for her neighbor and spilled some coffee on the rug, so she had the whole rug steam cleaned and she cleaned up the house on top of that. And then her neighbor came back and was super offended and stopped talking to her and Eleanor's like, "Whaaaaa....? I don't uNdErStAnD..." I guess if you like armchair psychology, you could sit there and come up with literally any reason she would do that, but I think that's super lazy on the author's part - come up with reasons your characters do weird shit, and then commit. Don't just have them do weird shit and leave your readers to make up reasons for it, justify it in their mind, and then be condescending and rude to people like you who post online about how they didn't get it, saying "well she has real issues - she's not perfect with one flaw like the protagonists in all the YA books I read, she is super flawed all the way through, this is LITERATURE."

Anyway, I'm with you - on top of all of the unbelievable actions/flaws of Eleanor Oliphant, it was ultimately boring somehow?? I think it's a lack of psychological insight and just a narrative full of drudgery. Compare with Ottessa Moshfegh whose characters are incredibly flawed, and maybe unbelievably weird, but somehow believable anyway, and interesting the whole time.