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The poisonwood bible. I loved it in high school, because I was an oppressed little atheist/agnostic with hyper religious parents at a christian school. It was brilliant, vivid, groundbreaking, and wild in its defiance of cultural norms...
and now it's just a sort of sad story of how the christian mindset mirrors colonial/empire ambitions and everyone gets hurt.
I could not get through Lord of the Rings or Dune when I tried to read them as a teenager. But I recognized that these were good books that I needed to give another try. Read them again after college and loved them. (Got through all of the original Frank Herbert Dune books, I don't think any of Brian Herbert's follow ups had been written yet, I don't know that I would have read them anyway)
Most of the other books I couldn't finish as a child, I recognized as garbage (Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, for one), and have seen nothing to change my mind about them to give them another try.
That's odd; I'm almost the opposite. I definitely enjoyed lord of the rings more as a teenager, and struggle to really even appreciate them now. I still like the world, but the writing just seems off.
It's like reading the bible when you're an adult and realizing the evil character is God.
When I was a kid I absolutely loved the Narnia series, to the extent that I was depressed when I finished the last one. As a young adult I tried to reread the books and was stunned at how heavy handed the Christian propaganda was.
The first ever book I read in a foreign language, turned out to be a lot different from what I remembered when I picked it up and re-read it maybe 2 decades later after having mastered that language.
I read Catcher in the Rye pre-high school and thought Holden was great because he recognized everyone for being fake, then I read it in HS and decided Holden was a whiny brat that needed to STFU. Then I read it as an adult and realized he was just a traumatized kid trying to cope.
This was the book I consistently hated at every age.
I could see that he was a traumatised, lonely child. At the same time, he continuously engages in self destructive behaviour while having a superiority complex.
I guess for the time this sort of story may have been groundbreaking, but the fact that Holden never faces any sort of reckoning makes it boring and infuriating. It needed something legendary, like the "it's you" moment from Bojack Horseman.
I read it as a young adult after hearing several others online say it was their favorite book or strongly impacted them. I thought Holden was a whiny kid who did need help, but also really lacked personal accountability for someone who dedicated so much time to calling others phonies. That's ok, of course. Protagonists should be at least somewhat flawed, and it's especially reasonable if they are in the process of growing up.
But I mainly hated the narrative structure. I'm just going off of what I remember for all this, but it seemed like Holden just wandered between a series of significant encounters for the entire story without anything going anywhere. Other than >!the sister and a second encounter with the nuns,!< the characters were just discarded shortly after being introduced. Any scene could have been a good foundation for the rest of the story's development, but he just wanders somewhere else before all but the barest of conflict resolution happens. IIRC the furthest we got was at the end where >!he gets the idea to leave society behind, but his sister says she would miss him and asks him not to, so he just says "ok"!<. It felt like the entire story was the author just pranking the audience about potential character development before yoinking it away with a laugh.
This is exactly why I hated it. The "story" is ultimately static - Holden never develops, or faces notable consequences or even conflict with other characters for any of his actions.
Discussing the book irl or online is usually exhausting, because when I mention that I despise the protagonist, people usually defend him, and thus, the book, on the basis of him being a traumatised teenager.
Static stories where nothing happens can work, but only in a sort of meta way. I enjoy Philip K Dick's novels despite nothing really happening in most of them because of the existential themes they explore.
The most charitable "meta" interpretation I can give Catcher in the Rye is that it is a sort of commentary on how the lack of support for teenagers can cause them to self destruct and spiral. Even then, I feel that the book fails at achieving this, because Holden actively pushes away support at basically every opportunity, and has zero self awareness.
they left out "i loved this book when i read it as a teenager, and only noticed the nationalism/sexism/racism when i grew up"
for me: alas, babylon
When I was a teenager, the Ender's Game series was about exceptionally smart children. As an adult, it's about eugenics and forgiving Hitler.
I thought it was about empathy and humanity. Kids are abused into committing what would be considered war crimes if they were against other humans. At the end, if I recall, Ender finds and saves the last queen of the species and feels a profound empathetic connection.
The dynamic between his brother and sister, a sociopath and an empath, indicate the balance between both being a major theme.
another book i loved when i was stupid(er).
doesn't help that orson scott card is still a raging homophobe. brandon sanderson is also a mormon, but (it looks like) he was able to grow the fuck up and stop being a bigot
I don't think this is fair. Even the concept of society labeling "thirds" is portrayed as something disturbing.
And the sociopath brother becomes the hegemon of the planet earth if I recall correctly, and this also is not a good thing, but more seen as a dystopia reality. The military isn't seen as good, but manipulative.
Are the children bred as soldiers or to be leaders in society ever portrayed as good? it reads as tragic.
Is Hitler the queen of the hive in your eyes or Peter? Because Peter definitely isn't seen as positive and the hive is a different form of existence that eventually leads to the message that different species despite all origins or existence in a hypothetical can eventually come to coexist if mutual understanding is somehow found.
(I'm queer and Card is a bigot who can eat it, but I don't think any of it really shows in his writing.)
Kind of happened to me with with The Mists of Avalon. I started reading it and was like 'meh, this is sooo boring and sooo long, I will never finish it' and I started reading something else. I went back to it couple years later and loved it. I never re-read books though. Even the books I read 20 years ago I remember so well reading them again feels pointless. I remember all the good parts, character names, some of the dialogs. I would constantly feel the urge to skip parts I already know.
the problem with this book is the author unfortunately
I'm very sad about the Harry Potter series, and i loved reading it the first time around (that was shortly before the last 2 movies came out).
On the one hand, I loved reading the books - I devoured them in record time and lost quite a few hours of sleep because i just couldn't drop them after starting with Order of the Phoenix.
On the other hand, I learned afterwards what a foul human being JKR is. I'm someone who can split the art from the artist, and normally i would just do that as long as JKR doesn't see a penny from me, not even as PR (i borrowed the books, but i was in the cinema for the last 2 movies - can't undo that).
But the reevaluation of the books after JKR's twitter tirades made some themes obvious for me that are not that visible if you don't look for them - or don't want to. The treatment of the elves, the nearly all-white-school, the only black teacher called Shacklebolt, the using of jewish stereotypes for goblins... I am pretty angry at JKR for souring something I enjoyed, and I was pretty angry at myself for not noticing many things earlier simply because i let my guard down.
Looks like i fall into the first group, even tho i was around 30 when i read the books. Only defense i have is that i am not a native speaker and read them in english.
Yeah. That's a rough one. I still enjoy the story, for all its problems. Read the books voraciously and enjoyed most of the movies Deathly Hallows part 1 was boring because the 1st part of the book was rather boring... trying to split the book in 2 was a bad idea.
But now can't enjoy it. I know that she won't profit any more if I read the books I already own or watch the movies I have on DVD, but I can't, as much as I'd like to live through Harry's life again. (And would probably only take a few days to do...)
I've come into the view over the years that Harry Potter is bad writing both in terms of ethics presented and in terms of worldbuilding. Ethically, it plays off date rape drugs as comedic, and in terms of worldbuilding too much for me to even know where to begin.
Has anyone watched that Rupert the Bear cartoon recently?
Most racist shit I ever saw. Turns out a vestige of my childhood was Rupert hanging out with his Asian friend Ping Pong and a bunch of long nailed, thin moustached "Chinamen". Gollywogs level stereotypes and bullshit.
It's rare to be actually, physically agog.
I remember Rupert the Bear being great when I was a child. Let me pull up some episodes real quick
That last one hits home. In high school in the early 2000's I had to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It was awful and clunky and boring.
Smash cut up a few years ago when I turned 40 - I thought, "maybe I've got a different view now and this will be better".
Nope, it's all boomer you shit about "kids these days".
Just cause you only liked something when you were young doesn't mean it isn't good. Everyone talks about the perspective you gain as an adult, but people don't talk enough about the perspective you lose along the way.
It's also possible that it's genuinely good for people of all ages, yet you just obsessed over it in your teens and made yourself sick of it. Like I did with Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Which I admit appeals to the cynicism of youth, but it was recommended to me by a 50 year old, it's not just for teenagers dammit.
I never could finish 1984. I got maybe halfway through it and was like 25% interesting world building, 25% a sad, bitter, sexist person lamenting the way of things (particularly that be can't just fuck every woman, but also the lying totalitarian goverment) but also having no spine to even consider doing anything about it, and 50% him sneaking around to fuck some horny manic pixie dream girl against the rules. Unfortunately, id have probably enjoyed it more if I had read it at 16
Idk, I likes that part. Ultimately Winston is flawed and weak and yet he thinks he's making a grand defiant gesture, only to find out the party knew it all. All his secrets and triumphs where plainly and obviously known.
Effectively he builds himself up as a dramatic hero in his mind, and in narrative. The reader gets swept along, but when he falls, when he is crushed, we remember all the gross parts of his personality. We see him as the broken, pathetic man he becomes at the end lf the novel. I enjoyed how the experience of reading the text, and the experience of remembering the text tell two very different stories.
