Fascinating thread over at IO9 about books once loved, rendered unreadable a second time, mostly due to reader maturity.
I don't post comments over there, the process is too cumbersome, mostly because it's a remarkably well moderated board. I'd comment too rarely to bother, but respect them because it works so well. So, here. This is all in response to that, so you may want to read there first.
LOTR is the strongest resonance. I can't imagine reading any of them ever again. Bloated and bulky, as a student I swallowed it all whole, proud of devouring such a massive tome. Even then, I'm sure I skipped a lot of the extended battles and meals. A basecoat for all further fantasy, and probably a bit of my interest in linguistics. A courageous act of reading.
Hitchhikers Guide I have not read again in many years, although I'm sure I could hear the radio program gladly. It would be like Citizen Kane and The Light Fantastic, retroactively derivative. Changed the landscape, so now instead of seeming groundbreaking it feels dated. Well, Adams would have moved along with the times if he'd lived, and may have been a little gleeful that the books his fans most wanted him to write again became passe. Just the sort of ironic twist he might well enjoy.
And, yes, the whole Xanth series. I have to preface this heavily. I read them between terms in nursing school, along with Robert Aspirin's Myth series. I don't know if I was really paying attention as I read them, rather like watching trashy tv when too tired to think. I have to be specifically reminded of elements, to wit: the misogyny and pedophilia, to which I respond, "Ummm... yeah, I guess that was weird." Much like when a dream is creepy and illogical, but only seems so when repeated in full light and awakeness. I certainly never re-read any of them.
As for Aspirin... dunno. Maybe I should give him a go on a particularly tiring week sometime.
I read Ender's Game as an adult and detested it. Never got through Catcher in the Rye, and I'm suspicious of any adult who still likes Salinger. Not condemnation, mind, just wary. I doubt I could get through Mists of Avalon ever again, either.
Why do we love stuff as kids and young adults that are so repellant later? Obviously it has to be some sort of processing of ideas and not seeing the larger implications. The stories feed us, but what kind of junk did we eat? Did it mean something different to us, then? Is it akin to how I could relish cotton candy, for the play of it, the texture? Wouldn't touch the stuff today, the smell is bad enough. Did we just read into it what we needed to hear? Did the poison pass through, the sexual politics going over our heads? Lacking receptors for it, the garbage simply became compost?
I saw Harold and Maud at the DIA theater when I was perhaps 20. Fell utterly and hopelessly in love with it. For me, it was all about learning to be brave, take risks, step out into my life. When I saw it again many years later, it was still good, but the messages that seemed to glow with golden light at me the first time were effaced. I still found it charming, the music wonderful, Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon still endearing, but that was all. Like a spell to be said once, the magic now long faded away.
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I laughed out loud, here at the coffee shop where I am working on my ms (obviously not entirely), when I got to Mists of Avalon.
I LOVED that book when it came out, but when I picked it up a few years ago, it was squirm-making.
But it was just what I needed when I was ninenteen---kind of feminist soft-prn.
The flip-side of books I Loved But Can't Stand to Re-read
is Books I Can't Be Bothered With But Would Have Loved If They'd Been Around When I Was Young,
Harry Potter being foremost among them.
Oh, yes, and LOTR, for sure. I know I skipped some of the battles and ents and stuff, but I still read and adored the whole thing when I was fourteen. Couldn't get past the first few pages when I tried again in my 20s.
Still, I tend to feel grateful affection for the books (and movies) I can't stand anymore.
Others I don't love, love, love anymore but still very much like (such as Harold and Maude).
Fresca,
Oh, I'd have gone totally HP when I was say 10-16. I did read most of the first one, and first and last pages of the next 4, because so many adults around me were raving about them. Wasn't impressed, but I could see the appeal for the young.
Yup, read Mists when I was 20, eye opening at the time. Polemic, which maybe the young need, all spelled out in pedantic clarity.
Asimov's earlier stories were definitely harder to read as an adult as compared to when I read them as a pre-teen. I did not get nearly as much out of them the second go around. Some of his later novels have stood the test of time much better.
I'm glad I'm part of a book group as doing so has compelled me to read a number of books I would never have opened.
i must admit i still love ender's game, though the trilogy that came later is absolutely insufferable. i also think that sometimes it is the glow of nostalgia that adds flavour to the second (or third) read.
the mists of avalon were such a horrid disappointment - i so wanted to love it again and instead found myself embarrassed.
Perhaps it's just that when we're older we've read so much more and have a better sense (even if it's subconscious) of what constitutes good writing — not just style, but content too. For example, what might have seemed like insights to our younger selves we now recognise as bordering on facile.
Pete,
I'm sure that is a big part of it.
Most of the things I loved as a kid, I still love as an adult, even if with a slightly different perspective.
But I do find that as I've got older my tastes have skewed more towards pure entertainment.
As a teenager, I would watch lengthy art house movies where almost nothing happened. Now I give the side-eye to any movie longer than 90 minutes.
As a student in my early twenties, I'd read proper literature. I'm still proud to say that I've read Moby Dick, but these days I expect books to meet me in the middle. Be high-minded, sure, but tell a story that sucks me in and isn't frivolous with my time.
I wonder if this is backwards from many people, or more common than I might think.
Among well educated people, I think it's more common than you think. D read Moby Dick, and assures me he couldn't do it again now.
I think we are just much more accepting of everything, good or bad, when very young. As our tastes develop, we have less time to devote to stuff we know we don't like.
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