Ever re-read favorite books and dislike them?

Cafe Society
1

I’ve been a pretty heavy reader since childhood. I’m currently 58. I average over 1 book per week, probably 2/3 Fiction. I recently re-read a few books by authors whom I would have long said were my favorites, but this time around, I was underwhelmed. Anyone else experience anything similar?

In my 20s-30s, I would have told anyone who would listen, than Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, and Walker Percy were on my to-10 - maybe top-5 - authors. Often identified Far From the Madding crowd as my favorite book.

Over the past year, I read FFtMC again and found it - okay. Liked the writing, but found myself angry at Bathsheba and disappointed at Boldwood.

Recently re-read Sense and Sensibility. Was shocked that I did not love Austen’s writing. Prevuiously would have maintained that she wrote beautifully. Now, was struck by her run-on sentences, and inconsistencies in style. (Yeah, not entirely fair, as S&S was rewritten.)

Most recently, I re-read 2 Percy books that I had long thought my faves of his: Second Coming and Lancelot. Considered them nigh unreadable. Skimmed through much of Lancelot.

I’m not trying to persuade anyone one way or another about the merits of these authors/books. Instead, just wondering about the extent to which my tastes seem to have changed. I wonder if I truly enjoyed these works before, or “thought/said” I did for some other reason. Or have I changed in the way I approach reading?
Almost makes me afraid to re-read any other of my faves! :o Pretty sure Harry Crews would still stand up, but not sure I want to commit to different translations of tolstoy!

I guess the opposite would be interesting: books you previously disliked, but appreciated more the second time around. But I imagine it takes a rarer reader to revisit something they previously disliked. Personally, I was never able to appreciate Confederacy of Dunces despite repeated attempts. And Faulkner and Joyce consistently remained beyond my grasp/interest.

2

Blame the Suck Fairy.

3

When I was young and had bad taste, I liked Piers Anthony’s writings. Now, well… a few of them are mildly entertaining, but all of them are bad.

To a lesser extreme: Heinlein’s Red Planet was, as a teenager, my favorite among Heinlein’s juvenile novels. On re-reading it, though, it’s not bad, but it’s fairly bland, and not nearly in the upper echelons of his writing.

And for the reverse: The first time I read the Narnia books, I was much less fond of A Horse and his Boy than most of the others, largely because so much of it just went over my head. But when I re-read them as an adult, I loved it.

4

Thanks - I enjoyed that! :smiley:

5

Yup. In my teens and early 20s, I read a lot of fantasy fiction. Among my favorites were the Thomas Covenant series, by Stephen R. Donaldson, and the Belgariad and other series by David Eddings.

In the past decade, I’ve gone back to re-read both series, and stopped. In the former case, I’ve realized that Covenant is just unbearably obnoxious, and one of his very first acts, upon arriving in The Land, is:

raping a teenaged girl

I got about 1/3 of the way through the first book (Lord Foul’s Bane), and set it aside.

Similarly, Eddings’ books didn’t age well for me, either. Part of this is that I’ve come to realize that Eddings came to write fantasy because he realized that he could be a successful author by mastering the tropes and formulas of fantasy (and his books are very formulaic). Another part is that the main characters tend towards being smug polymath geniuses, and there is always a scene in each of his books in which the heroes sit in a room, and map out their plan of attack against the bad guys (who are always dumb as bricks), during which they pat each other on the backs for their genius plans.

6

I struggle to read dense writing more now than in the past. I blame the internet and my surfing habits. It allows me to have constant shallow reading that I get to chose or guide. Constant stimulation. click, click, scroll scroll, next page, etc.

When I pick up a book, I have to go on a journey to wherever that author wants to take me. I have to go his/her pace. I can get frustrated and bored.

7

This is something I’ve been wondering about myself. Not only the internet, but my occupation has required that I essentially “skim” huge amounts of complex written material, to pull out the most important bits. Having done that for 30 years, day after day, I fear it has made it tougher for me to really challenge my brain when reading for enjoyment.

Compounded by my inability to retain specific info. So frustrating to think, “Damn, I waded through an entire book on that, and barely recall any of it!” That recollection multiplied over and over, may contribute to my paying less attention now.

We still get a paper newspaper delivered. My wife has commented on how I can read it so quickly. I find I am largely skimming it for headlines, and a few interesting points. I have to make a concerted effort to attend to a complex article that interests me.

8

When I was about nine or ten I loved a series of fantasy books: The Dragonlance Chronicles. I read and re-read about Tanis, the half-elf, and Raistlin the magician with an attitude. Couldn’t get enough of them.

Tried reading the series again as a gown-up. Let’s just say it wasn’t Tolkien.

9

Heinlein is tough; I re-read Stranger in a Strange Land last summer for probably the fourth or so time, but the first in over a decade. I enjoyed it, but it lacked the ‘edge’ I remembered. And the sexism of the era seemed a lot sharper. While it’s always been obvious, even as I read it as a young teen, this time there just seemed to be more individual sentences that just yanked me out; lots of words and actions of women that were not believable. The female characters are all so clearly acting out Heinlein’s fantasy version of sexy, liberated women, and it’s hard to get through.

As is referenced in the link Darren Garrison posted, it’s marred in many ways not because he’s necessarily the most sexist sci-fi author of his era (though maybe he is), but because he attempted to put real female characters front and center, putting all his sexism on display. His “progressive” views on gender are quaintly patriarchal. (The original Star Trek suffers from this as well).

10

I’ve met the authors, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, a few times. Very nice people. Not great novelists. Neither of them were accomplished fiction writers when they started writing the series, either – Hickman was a game writer, and Weis was an editor (though she’d apparently written a number of children’s books).

Also, my understanding is that, in at least some cases, they were novelizing events which occurred during playtests of the Dragonlance adventure modules which TSR was concurrently developing.

11

Yeah, I entirely agree - and I think it’s not just that: it’s also the simple act of reading and writing* for a living that makes the thought of finishing the day by reading a book for pleasure just…unappealing. I really don’t much, these days. Got out of the habit, I guess.

But to address the OP: at 14 or so I discovered Tolkien, and read everything I could find by him. At around the age of 30 - when I was still a pretty voracious reader - I returned to the books. Loved The Hobbit. Hated LOTR - really could not find any merit in it at all - not that I got that far into the books. I don’t have an explanation for this - sorry.

More recently I have given up on fiction entirely. But I’ll take a biography or two or something else factual away on holiday.

j

    • Technical reading and writing
12

Some years ago I undertook to re-read a few books that I loved as a teenager/young adult. Kerouac and Salinger didn’t hold up too well. On the other hand, I appreciated Henry Miller much more than I had as a young’un.

13

I recently re-read the series too. The brooding half-elf, the gruff dwarf, and all of the other cliches. Ugh. I still loved Tas.

14

I can’t say that this has happened to me. There are cases, as others have observed, where the Curent Me has a greater knowledge of literature, so things I missed when I was younger are now glaringly obvious. Like how the beginning of Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy is a blatant imitation of Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, and how the Anthropologist Margaret Mader who shows up later is a very thinly disguised Margaret Meade. Or how Robert Sheckley’s The Status Civilization is actually not the straight adventure story I first thought it was, but tongue-in-cheek sendup of such things. (It was ripped off by the original version of Total Recall. I wonder how many people watching it realized that it was based on a novel that didn’t take itself at all seriously)

the other big change is when your own aging affects the way you see that characters and interpret their actions. So when you’re older, Romeo and Juliet aren’t Star-Crossed Lovers who die tragically but a couple of impulsive kids.

A third thing is Creeping Reality. I re-read Stranger in a Strange Land recently (I have it as an audio book, so it’s pretty easy), and I can’t help but notice the widening gap between the technology and society and what we actually do now have. Heinlein’s quasi-telegraph messages that have to be photographed and sent seem – quant – in an era of e-mail, texts, and tweets. It doesn’t bother me when I read Verne or Wells and their technology is completely wrong in its extrapolation, but I first read SiaSL when it was less than a decade old, and still seemed cutting-edge.

15

From time to time, I re read some of the classic science fiction and fantasy I enjoyed as a teenager/young man. A lot of it has held up pretty well. Dune is still a sprawling work of imagination, and the Foundation is still crisply written and full of cool ideas (even knowing the spoilers).

The Hobbit though was kind of a disappointment, Not bad, exactly, but rather boring.

I reread RP a while ago, and thought it was still great.

16

Great article! It reminded me of a former favorite, Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. When it first came out I was enchanted and read it several times in the late 80s and early 90s. Fast forward 20+ years; I re-read it and was disgusted.

17

I read Tim Powers’s Last Call many years ago, and I loved it. I used to say it was my favorite Powers book.

But I had the naggling suspicion that I might have been too caught up in the atmosphere to notice the plotholes that dog many of his books, so I recently reordered it, fully expecting that I might run into some unfortunate fridge logic.

Well. I ran into some unfortunate stuff, all right. At least one plothole, yes, and quasi-incest that I somehow didn’t remember despite it being a huge plot point, and casual use of anti-gay slurs. And worst of all, because I knew the basic direction of the plot, the sense of wonder was gone. The things that had been atmospheric and creepy the first time around were now just WTF at best.

At least The Stress Of Her Regard has mostly held up over the years. Fingers crossed that the suck fairy doesn’t find where I put it.

18

The Circle of Light series by Neil Hancock. The first time I read this series I thought it was the greatest thing since LOTR, the second time I read it I thought it was boring.

After reading LOTR 30 times then saying NEVER AGAIN, I’ve decided there should be some kind of rule that you shouldn’t read your favorite books more than once.

19

Tom Robbins. Carried Another Roadside Attraction and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues with me wherever I went. Read them over and over. Couldn’t even do 10 pages of Cowgirls a couple years ago.

A Confederacy of Dunces, to my sorrow. I have been known to cry “Oh! My valve!” at opportune times for 35 years. Picked it up after a long hiatus and was actively repelled by both Ignatius’s character and the extreme overuse of adverbs. Burma Jones still cracked me up.

I’m sure there’s more.

20

As a young adult, I loved John Steinbeck’s writings. If I pick one of his books up nowadays, the stories seem annoyingly boozy and misogynistic.