How to express the following phrase "I don't like to do something"?

Question

I have found several choices to express this phrase like "ungern etw machen", "nicht gern etw machen", "es nicht mögen, etw zu tun".

Which choice of these sounds the most idiomatic ?

Let us take this examples:

Ich lese nicht gern lange Texte.

Ich lese ungern lange Texte .

Ich mag es nicht, lange Texte zu lesen.

Ich mag keine langen Texte lesen.

Answer 1

Since the main thing is »lange Texte« I would recommend to put it first.

Lange Texte lese ich nicht gern.

Lange Texte lese ich [nur] ungern.

The use of »mögen« is also okay here (and my favourite), but you should omit the main verb in this case.

Lange Texte mag ich nicht.

In all three cases the meaning is the same and has no special connotation: I don't like reading long texts.

Answer 2

I do not recommend to use the fourth example. The other examples sound fine, however there can be a large meaning difference. For example,

Ich lese nicht gern lange Texte.

and

Ich lese ungern lange Texte.

do not have the same effect. The second one is way more drastic, since the first one is litotic. It depends on the context when you would use which option. If it is just this example, I prefer the first option because it sounds more polite.