# books revisited **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 1, 2015, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-revisited/736329 "2015-11-01T12:26:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![blueweave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ba8739/32.png) [@blueweave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blueweave)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2015, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-revisited/736329/1 "2015-11-01T12:26:33Z")
What has been your reactions rereading noteworthy(to you) books 20 + years later. Ex: how could I have been so dumb,smart,naive, different, etc…from now. ---
**Author:** ![Nightfall1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@Nightfall1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nightfall1)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2015, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-revisited/736329/2 "2015-11-01T13:05:19Z")
I’m 62 years old. In my teens I discovered the Bantam reprints of Doc Savage. I LOVED them, rip roaring adventure stories for young males. I had almost all of the paperbacks. Long gone now of course. I saw the first one I ever read at a used book store and figured I’d get it and relive my past. BIG mistake. Oh my gosh they were badly written. It was a monthly magazine back it the thirties so the stories were written very fast with no revision for pennies a word. I got through the first one, tried another one and only got two chapters into it before I put it down. I won’t try the Shadow reprints or the Avenger reprints. lol ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2015, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-revisited/736329/3 "2015-11-01T13:14:43Z")
Lovecraft. It is important to have read the Mythos but very difficult to read it as an adult. ---
**Author:** ![Nightfall1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@Nightfall1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nightfall1)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2015, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-revisited/736329/4 "2015-11-01T13:55:38Z")
Lovecraft…oh yes. I tried to read him in my middle twenties and my brain just shut down. My older brother laughed and said I started when I was too old. He got into him when he was 13 years old. The perfect age to read Lovecraft. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2015, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-revisited/736329/5 "2015-11-01T14:10:16Z")
When I read **The Fountainhead** when I was 17, I thought it was cool. I tried to read it again in my 20’s and started laughing. I first read **Dune** as a young teen and loved it. I have read it as an adult and still got caught up in it. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2015, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-revisited/736329/6 "2015-11-01T15:19:24Z")
I’m right now rereading Zelazny’s Amber books which I first read as a teenager - still pretty great, but not as great as they are if you’re 15. ---
**Author:** ![blueweave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ba8739/32.png) [@blueweave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blueweave)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2015, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-revisited/736329/7 "2015-11-01T18:00:45Z")
There are still a dozen books I still reread every 10/15 years,Pratchett, Tolkiens, LeGuin, mostly for comfort and to remember what good prose looks like,but I tend to shy from rereading out of curiousity, the cat always get killed. It makes me aware of how susceptible I was of other’s opinions and how opinionated i was.This being said I still think Faulkner and K. Dick is tripes. I guess a succsessful reread is when you still agree with yourself. Still some falling out are hard , like with Hemmingway, altho that might be changing again. ---
**Author:** ![Mudshark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f04885/32.png) [@Mudshark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mudshark)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2015, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-revisited/736329/8 "2015-11-01T20:46:25Z")
John Saul. Used to read him all the time, went and reread one of his books a few months ago, And felt like he used words for the sake of using big words. Not as good as I remembered. However V.C. Andrews was just as bad as I remembered, and still couldn’t pit it down. ---
**Author:** ![lisiate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f05b48/32.png) [@lisiate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisiate)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2015, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-revisited/736329/9 "2015-11-01T21:26:17Z")
Jo Walton calls this [‘The Suck Fairy’](http://www.tor.com/2010/09/28/the-suck-fairy/). > [@](#): > > The Suck Fairy is an artefact of re-reading. If you read a book for the first time and it sucks, it’s nothing to do with her. It just sucks. Some books do. The Suck Fairy comes in when you come back to a book that you liked when you read it before, and on re-reading—well, it sucks. You can say that you have changed, you can hit your forehead dramatically and ask yourself how you could possibly have missed the suckiness the first time—or you can say that the Suck Fairy has been through while the book was sitting on the shelf and inserted the suck. The longer the book has been on the shelf unread, the more time she’s had to get into it. The advantage of this is exactly the same as the advantage of thinking of one’s once-beloved ex as having been eaten by a zombie, who is now shambling around using the name and body of the former person. It lets one keep one’s original love clear of the later betrayals. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2015, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-revisited/736329/10 "2015-11-01T21:43:46Z")
On the other end of the scale: When I first read C. S. Lewis’ _A Horse and his Boy_ as a child, it was kind of blah, and probably my least favorite of the Narnia books. Re-reading it as an adult, though, I realized just how jam-packed it was with symbolism, that I had never noticed before but could now appreciate. It’s now probably my second-favorite. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2015, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-revisited/736329/11 "2015-11-01T22:38:37Z")
I’ve seen it the other way – I hated **Great Expectations** when I read it in high school, but when I read it for graduate school, I discovered it’s a damn fine novel. I do reread my favorites, but they all tend to hold up. I either was aware of the flaws the first time along (and don’t reread) or liked books that were well written. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2015, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-revisited/736329/12 "2015-11-02T03:27:24Z")
When I first read “Tehanu,” the fourth book in Ursula K. LeGuin’s “Earthsea” trilogy, I didn’t like it. I thought it shoehorned too much feminist thought into a bronze-age culture, and that it just didn’t work. I’ve re-read it three times since, and each time, I find I like it more and more. The feminist motifs can be seen as “universal” motifs, part of human nature. The effort at an enlightened outlook is not dependent on industrial age reformations, but can be made compatible with bronze-age society. Also, the story itself, as a story, is nicer each time I read it.