sorter

I (28F) recently had my birthday and invited some of my friends and family over for a birthday dinner. My guests all brought me birthday gifts which I appreciated and one of my friends (29M) gifted me one of his favorite books he had been telling me to read since forever but I had never gotten around to. It was called Dungeon Crawler Carl and one of the reasons I never read it even though I am a big reader to begin with is because it seemed almost certainly not my thing. If you don't know, the book is basically like a novelized version of a video game with the character fighting bosses, completing levels, and opening up loot boxes. While I enjoy the occasional video game, I wouldn't qualify myself as a gamer and reading something like that seemed to me to obviously be something I would find a chore.

I thanked him for the gift and promised him I would read it. I started it and got about halfway through before finally giving up. I found the humor grating and the video game mechanics aspect very tedious and annoying to read. This isn't me saying my opinion is objectively correct on this and that no one should read it, but it was absolutely not for me and I knew it wouldn't suddenly click for me and I would enjoy it if I read further.

Later, my friend asked me what I thought about the book and I told him the truth that I got halfway through it and decided not to finish it as I was not enjoying it at all. He got surprisingly upset with me and said he was frustrated that I couldn't read through it all at least before rejecting his gift. I told him I wasn't rejecting the gift and I was appreciative of the gesture but he shrugged that off and has been cold to me ever since.

AITA?