Is anyone else reading less demanding books?

Joanna Trollope isn't intellectually challenging but always enjoyable IMO.

I spent my working life reading impenetrable research documents and policies, and would even take the things to bed, or on holiday, as they needed reading several times. My leisure reading material was always heavy, too. Now, I read for entertainment and I will follow recommendations or go to the genres I prefer like psychological thrillers. There are classics I have enjoyed, and I occasionally return to Dickens or Dostoevsky, but give me Jeffrey Deaver, Mark Gimenez or Mark Billingham for rattling good yarns with lots of twists. I don't want to work too hard to be entertained now, and will no longer persist when I find a book uninteresting.

Deeda, that seemed to happen to me when I had the children and stopped reading Tolstoy, Orwell, Dickens etc and switched to H E Bates. It's been downhill all the way since then, except when I [very rarely] find a book that grips me [Captain Corelli; The Kite Runner; The Lovely Bones; The Time Travellers Wife]. I spent most of my youth reading in every spare moment. I'm hoping that, when I retire, it will come back to me. I've tried some chick lit but haven't been able to get into it. The Help was the last new book that I enjoyed, and re reading Seabiscuit [or reading it properly]. I miss disappearing into 'that other world'. Maybe the internet is to blame, because I disappear into that world instead?

I downloaded the Complete Sherlock Holmes. Very light reading but most enjoyable.

Dee, I'm with you there,I have just ploughed my way through Anna Karenina for my book group and have vowed from now on just to read stuff that makes me laugh or entertains me. I have down loaded a whole lot of murder mysteries on to my Kindle, none of which cost more than 1.99, and I am really looking forward to reading them.I am fed up with the depressing stuff and 900pages is 700 too many in my opinion.

Our book club has just read Ragnarok by A S Byatt and not one of us got through it. Perfectly impossible - has brilliant reviews from the posh newspapers, but for all of us (with a combined impressive list of professional and other educational qualifications) it proved completely inaccessible. Indeed we all felt that it was a waste of life to continue with it. Maybe that is the key - we are all retired or close thereto and there is a sense that there is no point wasting time reading stuff that does not speak to us in any way.

Touch of the emporer's new clothes for my money - and also it is based on norse myths which do nothing for me anyway.

most of what I read is "chick lit" I like the fact that it doesn't take much brain power

I get my mental stimulation elsewhere

Dee I read some right trash at times, its light entertainment when I need to escape.