Woman Reclining by Sigismund Ivanowski
Reading Sheila Kaye-Smith’s All the Books of My Life this week, a wonderful memoir of her life in books, this passage caught my eye:
When at the age of fifteen I started my period of conscientious reading, I received one piece of very good advice. A friend of my mother’s advised me not to read Thackeray until I was grown up. ‘You wouldn’t understand him now. You’d miss a lot.’
This was perfectly true and I only wish her advice had been applied more widely, for I spoilt a number of books and authors for myself by reading them too early…If I were ever asked to guide a young person in a similar situation I should put Dickens and Jane Austen with Thackeray on the waiting list, also the whole of George Eliot except Adam Bede and the whole of the Brontës except Jane Eyre.
I think most dedicated readers, those of us who always have a book on the go and four (or forty) waiting in the wings, have at some point in our lives a list of great authors whose works we want to read. My list began when I was around twelve and just starting to discover the classics. I was ready to move on from Agatha Christie’s mysteries and Daphne du Maurier’s suspenseful romances to ‘important’ books, the ones I felt that I, as a clearly brilliant person destined for future greatness, should read. My ambition at that age was exceeded only by my ego.
I put all the great books I knew about and many I didn’t on to that list. It looked like every “Greatest Novels of All Time” list you have ever seen and I thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world. And then, being a person who likes to follow through on her plans, I started reading, little knowing how irresponsible my ambition was in the eyes of Kaye-Smith and others like her. Innocently, I thought that if I was interested in a book I should read it. I had no older friends or family members intent on guiding my reading during those years, no one to warn me not to attempt books beyond my reach, but did I spoil any books for myself by reading them when I was in my teens? I suspect not.
I know there are books I did not understand fully when I read them but does an imperfect understanding ruin anything? Did reading Northanger Abbey or Sense and Sensibility when I was in my early teens dull me for life to the brilliance of Austen? Obviously not. But did I understand Austen’s brilliance at the time? Certainly not. I was reading for plot. I fell in love with the stories. Later I came to appreciate Austen’s skill and the artistry that went into the creation of each book and that appreciation continues to grow with every rereading.
I read Jane Eyre, one of Kaye-Smith’s ‘approved’ books for youths, when I was fourteen in school and hated it. Was this the fault of a too early introduction? Or perhaps a too late one? Would I at twelve, when for one brief summer I understood (thanks to du Maurier) the allure of gothic novels, have been more receptive to the absurdities of the plot and the odiousness of Mr Rochester that irritated me so much a few years later?
The age at which we read a book is of vital importance to the way we experience it but that does not mean that each book comes with a correct age at which to read it. You are not only going to appreciate Vanity Fair if you wait to read it until you are forty-five but you will perhaps appreciate it differently than you did at fifteen and twenty-five and thirty-five. You will understand more and miss fewer allusions but that does not mean you will enjoy it more.
My booklist was abandoned many years ago. The sense of obligation I had when I began it, the feeling that I needed to read and enjoy certain books in order to be a better educated person, disappeared as I grew older and wiser. But the list served its purpose well.
For me, what was most important about this fumbling and indiscriminate assault on great literature was that it exposed me to great literature, to books that if I had waited until I was older I might have realised I was supposed to find intimidating. I may not have finished them all but I started to develop my taste. I learned that I loved Austen and Thackeray but hated Fitzgerald and Hemingway; that I was fascinated by modernist’s techniques without ever managing to enjoy one of their novels; and that Romantics (especially poets) could send me screaming into the night. I learned that language can be played with, that humour comes in many forms, and that there is nothing more attractive than an author with a distinctive voice. I did not necessarily absorb these lessons consciously but they have informed my writing and my reading ever since. Apologies to Sheila Kaye-Smith but, in the face of such an education, I cannot feel that anything was spoiled.
I recently read Wuthering Heights for the first time since I was a teenager, and I would say that I preferred it when I was younger. I was swept away on the language and poetry of it, while not having enough experience to recognise how damaged these people were.
I was surprised that Kaye-Smith didn’t include Wuthering Heights on her list of books that are okay for young people since, like you, I think the drama of it probably appeals to them more than an older, more emotionally stable audience. Heathcliff and Cathy make all sorts of sense when you are thirteen and riddled with hormones; not so much when you are forty-three!
It appeals to teens, but it screws with their heads! Heathcliff isn’t romantic, he’s an abusive lout. Girls shouldn’t be reading about him when they are too young to realize that he’s a no-goodnik.
Fantastic, funny, thoughtful post, Claire! I loved “‘important’ books, the ones I felt that I, as a clearly brilliant person destined for future greatness, should read.” What a shame we didn’t live in the same place, we could have been precocious together.
I want to put together a thoughtful response, but my computer is about to restart to install updates… hmm… I suppose I would say that it doesn’t much matter when people read things, so long as they are willing to re-read, or at least acknowledge that their opinion could change. The danger of not appreciating an author early on is that one never goes back, isn’t it? But surely an immersion in great literature has got to be better than a diet of vampire novels until one turns 18, and decides not to read any more…
Simon, I think it a shame we don’t live in the same place now, nevermind fifteen years ago. How insufferably precocious we could have been then! Also, we could have traded “Sweet Valley High” novels (in between the Dickens and Austen) and that would have been both convenient and awesome. As it was, all of my friends viewed it as their life’s mission to knock me back down to earth when I started getting a bit snobbish. This was probably for the best as it made me both a) bearable to be around and b) almost immune to insults.
I’m with you on this one. It’s not always what you get out of the great novels at the time you read them but the connections they make – the titles they reference, the authors and titles cross-referenced in the introductions, other books on similar themes… Removing Vanity Fair for example doesn’t just remove Thackeray’s book it removes all the thinking about heroes/anti-heroes, the books it’s satirising, morality etc etc etc. Accepting you might need to re-read it later seems more sensible than putting it in the ‘Do Not Crack Glass Until 35′ cupboard.
I love your point about the connections that great literature introduces you to and it is one I didn’t even consider when I was writing this post! Extensive footnotes were a godsend when I was younger, helping explain satirising of books or people that I didn’t at the time even know existed, helping me to see those connections where otherwise I might not have spotted them.
Yes! I had exactly the same reaction to this quotation. I *loved* everything I read as a teenager even when I was understanding a fraction of it. I remember reading Hemingway and thinking, “This is so brilliant! If only I knew what he was getting at.”
However, when I think of some of my non-reading friends, or the ones who read nothing but dross, I hear them say, “Oh, I was forced to read those kinds of books in school and couldn’t stand them.”. Those are the people I think she’s writing about. I remember the groans in school of all the kids who hated novel study. A few years out of school an old lady said to me that she thought we turn a lot of kids off reading by giving them depressing books to read in school curriculi. But would those kids have complained less if they’d have been given “Hard Times” rather than “Wuthering Heights?”
Personally, I think it has everything to do with early introduction of good literature and nothing to do with the sophistication or maturity of the reader. I have always read good books to my daughters. I will admit to refusing to read “Barbie as Rapunzel” picturebooks and Rainbow Fairy chapter books outright, even when they were requested (I don’t limit what they want to read to themselves though). Both my girls enjoy all manner of books way above the level society expects of them because they’ve never been told they are “difficult books.”
Thanks for the thought-provoking discussion!
Your Hemingway reaction is exactly how I felt about a number of those ambitious books I tried young, although my actual response to Hemingway specifically was less “this is so brilliant” than “where are all the adjectives?”
I could see how this quote would make much more sense if Kaye-Smith were talking about non-readers but I can tell you that was not the context. She was an avid reader who was eager to try certain books but, feeling like she needed to be older to appreciate them, waited until she reached the magic age of twenty-one before attempting a number of them.
Glad you’ve enjoyed the discussion!
I’m so surprised to see all of Austen on her list of ‘wait until you’re grown up.’ I started reading the ‘greats’ at a young age & for the most part got along very well with them. This might sound snobbish, but I feel like I was an intelligent enough reader even in my teens to appreciate literary styles, etc. Certainly rereading them as I’ve gotten older has changed my relationship to them, but I deeply value being able to reread them & compare my different impressions.
Which is to say I’m certainly on your side rather than Kaye-Smith’s! And I too have never gotten along with Jane Eyre (I think I first read it when was 13 or 14) despite several attempts.
How can she put Pride and Prejudice on a ‘wait until you’re grown up’ list? How?!?! My mind boggled at that since, to me, it was one of the most joyous reading experiences of my teen years and, having read it in school, I know every other fifteen year old girl in my class also adored it. I cannot imagine having missed that experience. With Austen’s later novels I can sort of understand why Kaye-Smith thinks an older reader would benefit more but not with the earlier, simpler ones.
A fantastic discussion of a topic I’ve never considered much before. Thank you very much for thinking and writing on it! I suspect a lot of us bloggers will now be pondering our own views and our own reading history.
I think perhaps the best route is to encourage children and teens to read whatever they want, allowing them not to finish books they’re not enjoying, and encouraging them not to hate those books they dislike but to return to them later. I remember loathing Wuthering Heights in school but now that I’m enjoying Charlotte Bronte’s novels I really want to return to Emily’s to see whether my opinion has changed. And any books those kids/teens like? They probably won’t understand the genius (I certainly didn’t, at that age), but now they know the stories and can always return to them again and again as they mature.
I fully agree with you, Samantha, about just encouraging children and teens to read and letting them decide what they are ready for. I do think most teens or preteens at least can recognize genius in a book, either enough to enjoy it at the time or to know they want to return to it later in life.
This probably could be said about a lot of the classics!
It could but I don’t think it should!
That’s a great quote and I tend to agree with the concept although, like Eva, I’m not sure about Austen being included. And I agree with you that it’s often just the appreciation that changes with age. I’ve been feeling that with some re-reads lately. But that’s books I loved then – what about the ones that I’ll never give another chance again?
I’d also use that quote the other way around – there were some books I should have read at a young age that grown-up, more “lighten-up”, more cynical, less introspective, less patient me just can’t handle now, e.g Narnia, the Russians, Woolf and the modernists in general.
I never read the Narnia books either, Alex, and I am kicking myself for that now. There are some children’s books that only retain their magic for adults if the first acquaintance was made during childhood. I am intrigued that you put the Russians, Woolf, and the modernists on that list too. I can’t say I’m a fan of any of them but, having tried them all as a teenager, I have more patience with them now than I once did.
I sort of agree with the concept of waiting – I do find myself advising my own daughter to hold off on certain books, because I *think* she might not fully appreciate them now, but might at some magical point in the future (and she’s 16 – pretty well “grown up” in many crucial ways) – but – okay – back to original thought – *I* read a whole lot of ambitious stuff from say, 11 or 12 years old upward, which I totally did not “get” 100% – and I *knew* I wasn’t getting it, but I sure enjoyed reading it, and my youthful naivety in no way spoiled those books for a re-read in a more adult/mature/grown up time. And I remember those books with brilliant clarity even now, 30+ years later, I think in great part because they were so “over my head” that I had to really dig in & concentrate to get through them. I never had a reading list, but I did have an idea that there were Big Important Books that I needed to read, because I (like Claire, & probably the rest of us, lol) was *obviously* a brilliant person destined for future greatness.
Plus those books were *interesting*.
I read Steinbeck’s big deep heavy stuff – East of Eden, Grapes of Wrath – when I was in Grade 6 – so I would have been what, about 12-ish? I remember mispronouncing “whore”, because it was a word I’d never heard used in real life before. (I was a child of very strict & morally upright parents; our television viewing was limited & firmly controlled, and it was in the early 1970s, in rural British Columbia. We didn’t talk about sex, in any of its forms, in my family.)
In Grade 7 I was on a Hemingway kick, and in Grade 8 I started on the Russians. I read Anna Karenina, and War & Peace, & *loved* them, and I remember struggling through an even more massive set of books whose author’s name escapes me – Quiet Flows the Don was one of them.
I read Don Quixote (the big full version), Vanity Fair (loved it then & have reread it numerous times, each one with a greater appreciation of how marvelous a story this is), everything by Dumas I could find, Balzac, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad … I even remember reading Lolita surreptitiously, but not really getting what all the fuss was about.
By Grade 10 I was heavily into the British writers – DH Lawrence stands out as particularly bemusing – and was dallying with John Donne and his Elizabethan compatriots. All the while reading all of the “age appropriate” books which crossed my path, as well as revisiting childhood favourites – Louisa May Alcott, LM Montgomery – as well as “adult” spy novels – Le Carre, Eric Ambler – and Vonnegut & Joseph Heller (Catch-22 – brilliant) and of course Agatha Christie. In Grade 9 my good friend & fellow bookworm Sheila had set ourselves the challenge of reading *all* of the Agatha Christie books. We had long checklists, and it was very competitive for a year or two there. I think she may have made the goal; I seem to have drifted off the path there somewhere – I’d discovered that there were more hands-on aspects to life (a job & my own money, buying a car & being free to come & go at will, and exciting/wonderful/terrible/tragic/it’s-all-good-again real-life romance) than living only in books at about that point.
So I guess I’m saying is – don’t wait! Read what you want to, when you feel the urge. You can always re-read later. Or not. It really doesn’t matter. If you have a “reading guide”, all well & good, but it’s certainly not a tragedy if you don’t.
In my opinion.
And it seems I had more patience (and time available to read uninterrupted) with longer, “deeper” books in my callow youth than I do now, so possibly the teen years are a *better* time to tackle the classics than in the twenties & thirties & all the years of “middle age”. Maybe?
Thanks for the opportunity to work out the typing fingers this morning, Claire! That was all nostalgic and kind of fun.
What a comment, Barb! This is just the sort of response I always hope I’ll get to this kind of post. I love hearing about other reader’s reading histories (which is why I was drawn to All the Books of My Life in the first place).
There are some books I think you need to read when you’re young or you don’t stand a chance of appreciating them. I would definitely put ‘Wuthering Heights’ in that category and probably most of Hardy as well. As you can probably guess, I’m speaking from personal experience here. I didn’t read “Wuthering Heights’ as a teenager and have never been able to see what all the fuss is about and while I quite enjoyed some Hardy when younger I can’t stomach him now.
I read Wuthering Heights and Hardy as a teenager and hated both. I feel quite positively towards Hardy as a person (and a poet, even) but as a novelist I cannot stand him. Sometimes it comes down to the age of the reader but, more often than not, I think it just comes down to the reader. I doubt there is any age at which I would have enjoyed Wuthering Heights!
I never believed in re-reading until about 10 years ago (with the exception for Jane Eyre), after having been an avid reader for about 25 years. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse was my first re-read, and I realized how much I missed out on my first read, at age 13.
However, I think it is important that you allow these classics to make marks on your tender young minds even without understanding them wholly, if that is ever possible with great classics at any age.
I love the last sentence of your comment, Sarah, about letting classics make their mark on the minds of the young. That, I think, it what it is all about.
Yay for indiscriminate classics reading while young! I agree that while age might matter in terms of being able to understand everything in certain books, it really doesn’t matter how old one is. When I was a kid I regularly read books that I missed a lot in but I still got a lot from them and enjoyed them and have enjoyed them again and again. It is good to encounter classics when young I think before, as you mention, you start to learn to be intimidated by them or get caught in the belief that the classics don’t have anything to offer because they are old and boring. Great post!
Glad you enjoyed the post, Stefanie.
It wasn’t until I start blogging that I realised how intimidating certain books are to a large portion of the population (or, on the flip side, how belittled other books or genres are). We make the accessible inaccessible for ourselves and that is unacceptable. A book is a book. It is just words strung together and there is nothing, at any age, that should be intimidating about that!
Claire, thanks for this post and the thought provoking quote. My “reading history” while similar to yours in its book list and my preference of Austen and Thackery over Fitzgerald and Hemigway was probably more restricted in breadth. We lived in the country far from a library and I had only one birthday and one Christmas per year in which to receive books! My father’s transfer to a city job brought the joy of a library and a subsequent treasure trove from which I am seldom parted. Sheila Kaye-Smith’s book is already on my request list!
I can only imagine how difficult it must have been growing up without a library to hand! Visits to my local branch were an almost daily feature in my childhood, something I am deeply thankful for.
btw, that is such a lovely painting!
Thanks! I am feeling like I wasted its beauty on clearly far too interesting content…but I can live with that.
I was far too attached to the rural, the melodramatic and the gothic in my teens to appreciate Jane Austen in any way, shape or form, but I would never counsel against reading a particular book. Better to say if a book doesn’t speak to you put it aside, because it’s moment may be still to come. And of course you’ll miss some things reading while very young, but then you can see much more on a reread when you already know something of the characters, the setting, and the story.
“Better to say if a book doesn’t speak to you put it aside, because it’s moment may be still to come.” – very sensible advice, Jane!
My comment got so long I’m making it its own blog post. But briefly, some people can’t re-read, and she may have been one of them. If you can’t re-read, it’s very different.
Yes, it would be very different if you weren’t willing to reread. But based on what Kaye-Smith says in the book, she did enjoy rereading so I am afraid she has no such excuse!
No, in that case I don’t get it at all.
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/01/is-there-a-right-age-to-read-a-book
Here’s my post anyway.
I read A Tale of Two Cities for the first time when I was 15 years old, at the recommendation of my English teacher. She thought it would suit my reading level. When I brought the book home, I remember my mom saying I should wait a few years to read it. I was angry with her because I thought, my teacher believed I was old enough to understand it, but there my mother was treating me like a child. Well, mothers do know best. I should have waited a few years because I know I didn’t understand everything. But that didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the book.
I did much better with Bleak House, which I read a year or so later.
Sounds like, even if you weren’t completely able to comprehend it all, that did not sour your reading experience with A Tale of Two Cities. I think it is important to push our boundaries as readers, especially when we are young, even if mom turns out to be right
Great quote for starting a discussion! I kind of get where Kaye-Smith is coming from in that some classics are better appreciated by readers with more life experience, but I think she goes too far in saying that a book would be spoilt by reading it too early or that younger readers should be discouraged from reading any classic they are interested in. As many others have said above, that’s what rereading is for – gleaning a new perspective each time you read a classic as you grow older. A teenager can decide if a classic is not for them, or they may turn out to enjoy a book that one wouldn’t expect. I think some books can get spoiled by being assigned to high schoolers, but that’s the way it goes sometimes, and even then, you can’t rule out that later in life, the book can reclaim value for the reader.
As I think Alex said above, the real danger is that there are some books that are best appreciated by the young and that I wished I had read when I was younger, but somehow overlooked.
Christy, I like your point about assigned reading. To me, that is probably the only case where a book can really be spoiled for a reader. Feeling compelled to read something you have no interest in at the time can sour you against it for life.
Lovely and insightful post, Claire! I agree with you – I think books can be read too early to be fully appreciated, but that doesn’t mean they can’t still be enjoyed. There’s no such thing as spoiling a book! As you say, there’s the pleasure of revisiting them and seeing so much more in them later on. You can see your own emotional development through books that you take with you from those early teenage years into adulthood, and there’s no greater pleasure in reading than that. I had an earnest list too when I was a teenager, determining to read all of the ‘greats’ – some I loved, some I didn’t understand, but like you, I never had this notion that they were beyond me and I never felt intimidated. Telling someone that a book is only for a certain age creates the belief that the book is difficult and incomprehensible and puts them off trying. All great books will have something in them for everyone. Some books reach younger people more profoundly than older people, too – I so wish I’d read some books I have discovered recently as a teenager because I would have loved to have been influenced by them at the age I was then. The Anne books, I Capture the Castle…I could go on!
Rachel, I am so happy that you are a teacher now. When I read comments like this one, knowing that you are in the classroom daily, able to inspire young people to get excited about books and reading, I am so encouraged and happy for them as well as you.
I was lucky enough to read the books you mention when I was young (the Anne books were my particular favourites when I was 8 or 9) but it is far too easy to think of books I’ve read as an adult that I would have adored as a teen or pre-teen. Mariana by Monica Dickens heads the list.
[...] for one of them! I wonder if you can guess which one.
Claire of the Captive Reader started an interesting discussion about whether reading classics ‘intended’ for ‘mature adults’ when [...]
I had to read David Copperfield for school when I was 11 or 12 and disliked it very much. I swore off of Dickens (except for A Christmas Carol), sure that I disliked him. Last month I read Great Expectations and enjoyed it very much. I have decided that either I was too young for Dickens then, or else it is just the right time now-43 years later.. It may also be that HAVING to read it didn’t help, although I HAD to read other books and enjoyed them…somewhat.
I had to read Great Expectations at the same age, Laura, and hated it. Sadly, the difference between you and me is that I still hate Dickens, having given him many chances to redeem himself since then! Maybe I’ll give him thirty years and then try again…
I, too, read “Great Expectations” at about 12 (for class) and loathed it. I decided Dickens was a very good author, as I despised every character in the book as if they were real people. That, and the fact they’re “classics” and I therefore should (so didn’t) read them kept me away from Dickens. I’m about ready to try “A Tale of Two Cities,” though.
I’m all for the “try it, put it down if you just aren’t enjoying it, and try again in a few years” school. But I also love to reread, discover what I missed the first time(s) through, and rediscover what I loved.
Thanks for the post.
Well written and a very interesting post. I am afraid I agree more with Kaye-Smith. I actually never read a lot of classics in my early teens but whatever I did, I have always had the yearning to go back and read them again because I know for a fact that I might have kind of missed the point. So if I had waited for some more years, I would have probably gotten more out of the experience and I am yet to go back and read those books again. I used that learning to guide my younger sister’s reading and I feel that her grasp on literature is much stronger than mine as a result.
But yes, I do agree that there are no rules to reading…and there is rarely ever any reason to stay away from a book unless ofcourse it’s Twilight.
I can certainly see the appeal of Kaye-Smith’s point of view and understand why you support it. But, at the same time, I wonder how many great books even when read by adults are fully appreciated on the first reading? The real value, to me, of great literature is that there is always something new to be discovered on each rereading, something more to be admired or appreciated as our understanding of the book deepens.
As much as I hate to be snobbish, yes, anything is better than Twilight. Unless it’s Fifty Shades. That, surely, is worse.
When I scrolled down to comment on your excellent blog post, I noticed how many people had stopped by to comment on your post. Attention well deserved. I enjoyed it too, it spoke to me. Thank you!
It proved quite a popular topic, didn’t it? I am so happy to know you enjoyed the post and the discussion, Diane.
[...] of The Captive Reader discusses reading Sheila Kaye-Smith’s All the Books of My Life and this [...]
I think you’re quite right, Claire. There were adult books I read as a young teen that I didn’t quite “get”, or that had some content that was too distinctly adult for me to know what to do with, but I don’t regret reading them and it didn’t spoil them – often, as an adult, I read a book wishing I could read it as if I were still a child or teenager. There was just something about the way I read books then, the way they blossomed in my head. I didn’t get all the nuances and sometimes I was bored by passages in Pride and Prejudice, for example, that I struggled to focus on. But I also discovered, interpreted, analysed and understood things in a way that my adult brain doesn’t seem capable of anymore, and there are plenty of days when I miss that. In some ways, I read better as a youth. Much less jaded, for one!
And I laughed at your description of reading Jane Eyre – I read it in grade 5 or 6, so when I was about 10 or 11, and absolutely loved it, even though I cringed a bit at Rochester’s immature behaviour (which seemed on par with the boys in class, except coming from a grown man!) – but with that experience in my past, every time I re-read it, I still love it, only now I can read more and more into it. Build layers on my understanding, without being distracted by the oft-times weak prose and over-the-top dramatics. In contrast, some books I read now, I know are suffering because of my adult brain and all the patterns its developed, becoming so much more defined and particular about its likes and dislikes, that there are times when I can’t see the beauty of a novel for the little things I don’t like about it.
Another example is recently re-reading The Great Gatsby, which I read during uni (but not for uni) and didn’t particularly care for, in face I couldn’t remember a single thing about it over the years so assumed it must have been boring. When I re-read it, I saw so much to enjoy and think about, so much going on between the lines etc., and I think one of the reasons why I enjoyed it so much this time around was precisely because I’d read it before. It’s like, every time I read Wuthering Heights (only twice so far), I enjoy it more than the last time. Re-reading certainly helps, but so does reading a book at different ages.
I can see what Kaye-Smith was saying, and part of me agrees with her – there are some books that I know I wouldn’t have enjoyed or got much out of as a kid, just as you said from your own experience. But that’s not a reason not to read them at younger ages. If you’re interested in a book, read it. If it doesn’t work out for you, that’s okay. I think what’s important is not closing your mind to the experience, and allowing yourself the chance to re-read it later in life, rather than just dismissing it as crap simply because you didn’t “get” it at the time. Besides, telling a child/teenager that they shouldn’t read a book because of their age and lack of experience, comes too close to censorship for my liking.
Great topic for discussion, Claire, and I loved reading about your list-writing younger self!
Very interesting thoughts, Shannon. Thanks for sharing!
Claire – just found the post by way of a link from Jo Walton’s lovely post at Tor.com (http://bit.ly/XKa11N) . I am fascinated by all of this. I got into the “classics” quite young (10-ish) through an ancient batch of Classics Illustrated that my mom found second-hand. House of the Seven Gables, Tale of 2 Cities, etc. – those led me to the actual books eventually. I was also reading Narnia, and the Hobbit (but not LOTR, which I have yet to get all the way through, despite several attempts, including a read-aloud right now with my kids). I agree that I was too young to realize that I wasn’t supposed to be reading these great tomes – they were just good books….but I also love revisiting them, and appreciating different things now.
I teach Grade 7′s and 8′s, and I regularly tell them to go back and read things again a decade from now (especially those who are reading Austen, and Dickens, and Wilde), and again another decade down the road. I tell them to do that with their YA stuff, too, as I think they’ll get something different out of the Hunger Games trilogy at 32 than they did at 12. And I regularly remind them that Heathcliff is a jerk! (much like Edward the vampire)
I am so encouraged to hear the advice you’re giving to students, Lisa! I think that rereading is the best way to not only understand a book but to also understand yourself, to see how you and your perceptions change over time.
that’s exactly what I want my students to get out of a re-read – that they have changed and grown. And sometimes, it’s to go back to a book, because you don’t want to have changed and grown. If I’m really sick in bed, I want my Harry Potters – because they let me leave behind my stress and worries and disappear for a while – they’re the comfort food of books.
What a beautiful post! I remember going through a similar phase (and also hating Jane Eyre when I was about 13 or 14), and I am only now (maybe being a bit slow) thinking that maybe I should re-evaluate some of the books I hastily dismissed when younger. I’m sure there are books that I hate now that I might love if I read them at another time. But overall I loved my reading, and there is always more to get from books, and I think you just put it all better than I could, so I will stop there.
Thanks, Catie. It is always interesting to go back and reread earlier books though, in my case, I can’t think of any cases where my opinion has fundamentally altered. The books I did not like I still dislike. But the books I liked I now love!