# Ever re-read favorite books and dislike them? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 25, 2019, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-re-read-favorite-books-and-dislike-them/830185 "2019-02-25T17:21:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2019, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-re-read-favorite-books-and-dislike-them/830185/21 "2019-02-26T21:06:32Z")
> [@furryman](#): > > 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. Why? I lost track of how many times I’d read LOTR sometime around the 30th reading. I guess I’m probably up to around 50 now. I clearly remember that in my 7th reading I felt I finally fully understood the book. Up through the 6th reading there were still moments of “whoa, I never noticed that connection before.” Maybe I’m just dense, but it’s hard for me to believe that anyone could fully appreciate the book in their first reading. ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2019, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-re-read-favorite-books-and-dislike-them/830185/22 "2019-02-26T23:19:19Z")
The Belgariad by David Eddings has been mentioned above. It was my absolute favorite book series when I was about 14 or 15. I must have read all the books 5 or 10 times. I tried to read them again when I was about 25. I found myself wondering why I ever liked them. Another vote for just about everything Piers Anthony ever wrote. In contrast, I find Tolkien holds up remarkably well. I continue to re-read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings every five or ten years. It’s not the same experience as it was the first time, but it’s still a great journey. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2019, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-re-read-favorite-books-and-dislike-them/830185/23 "2019-02-27T00:44:49Z")
It’s funny. I have favorite authors I can reread repeatedly. But I also have some favorites whose books I enjoy greatly - but have no desire to read a second time. I don’t know why I can enjoy reading a book by Peter Hamilton or Lois MacMaster Bujold or S.M. Stirling a dozen times while a book by Joe Haldeman or Harry Turtledove or Robert Charles Wilson is something I can enjoy a great deal but only want to read once. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2019, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-re-read-favorite-books-and-dislike-them/830185/24 "2019-02-27T01:27:35Z")
The Destroyer series by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir, I read the first 15 books. Watched the movie, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins a couple times. I recently reread books 1-3 and found the writing very simplistic and the stories just silly. I had a milder reaction rereading The Matt Helm books by Donald Hamilton. They hold up better, but the writing is a bit overblown. Lots of long speeches about how great America is. It gets annoying. My tastes changed over the past 25 years. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2019, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-re-read-favorite-books-and-dislike-them/830185/25 "2019-02-27T01:38:42Z")
Gene Wolfe holds up for me. I think, at 57, I am finally grown enough to appreciate him. Other favorites of my yoot…Stephen King, Isaac Asimov,Mickey Spillane, et al, do not fair so well. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2019, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-re-read-favorite-books-and-dislike-them/830185/26 "2019-02-27T01:41:35Z")
Dickens. I’m still a good reader, and can’t stand lightweight fluff, but I read a lot slower now than I did when I was 9, because my eyesight just isn’t as good. And that slows Dickens down enough so that I’m waiting for the story. And I’m a plot / story reader. Dickens was paid by the word. Back when I was reading 500 wpm, that didn’t matter. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2019, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-re-read-favorite-books-and-dislike-them/830185/27 "2019-02-27T01:43:03Z")
The Xanth books, what was i thinking? ---
**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:** [February 27, 2019, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-re-read-favorite-books-and-dislike-them/830185/28 "2019-02-27T02:09:18Z")
_Rendezvous with Rama_. Not because there was anything wrong with the book, but because the entire plot involved discovering things and wondering what they were. When I read it again, I already knew what was going to happen, so it lost everything that made it work. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2019, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-re-read-favorite-books-and-dislike-them/830185/29 "2019-02-27T03:26:44Z")
Most things hold up for me, but some things from my youth do not. Frank Peretti wrote a young adult or kids series about this archeological family. I read a few of them when I was a kids and loved them. Recently read one to my son and daughter and it was really badly written. Super cheesy, very obvious. Totally did not live up to what I remembered. [Here is the one I’m talking about.](https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327994082l/10465534.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Petrobey\_Mavromihalis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bcef8e/32.png) [@Petrobey\_Mavromihalis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Petrobey_Mavromihalis)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2019, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-re-read-favorite-books-and-dislike-them/830185/30 "2019-02-27T04:04:36Z")
I’m afraid it’s the Narnia books for me. I enjoyed them when I was young, and have enjoyed my son’s enjoyment as I have read them to him, but as an adult I can’t get past the misogyny and religious zeal. I didn’t read him The Last Battle. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2019, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-re-read-favorite-books-and-dislike-them/830185/31 "2019-02-27T12:33:02Z")
As a female high school student in the early 1970’s, I read James Kirkland’s book “Good Times Bad Times” and COMPLETELY missed the homoerotic overtones and the self-loathing it would have taken for a gay man to write the book. I just longed for friends/a boyfriend as witty and sensitive as the narrator or his friend. Years later I re-read the book and couldn’t believe I’d been oblivious to the homosexual passion between the two boys. The book made me extremely sad because the character who ultimately “gave in” to his same-sex desire was a crazed near-murderer, which is an awful and unfair portrayal of what it means to be gay. At the same time I was sad, I did have to laugh at my own naivete for not realizing that had the two protagonists been real people, I wouldn’t have stood a chance of romantic entanglement with either of them. As unfortunate as the book was, however, I still love the pseudo-Shakespearean insult “diseased son of a three-legged camel” that appears in its pages. ---
**Author:** ![Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/prof.pepperwinkle/32/13627_2.png) [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Prof.Pepperwinkle)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2019, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-re-read-favorite-books-and-dislike-them/830185/32 "2019-02-27T13:45:49Z")
Another vote for Piers Anthony. And I now find Asmov’s _Foundation Trilogy_ a bore and a waste of time, which surprised me no end. ---
**Author:** ![Airk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9de053/32.png) [@Airk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airk)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2019, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-re-read-favorite-books-and-dislike-them/830185/33 "2019-02-27T17:42:30Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > 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. Chronicles of Thomas Covenant was ALWAYS BAD. 13 Year Old Me, not known for his discerning tastes, gave up on Lord Foul’s Bane in like 3 chapters. It was awful. Eddings has just progressed to “vaguely guilty pleasure” for me, because the books are still full of what I consider amusing banter even if they are otherwise pretty dumb. The answer to “what was I thinking?” with the Xanth books is “You were probably 14, and stupid puns were funnier then.” ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2019, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-re-read-favorite-books-and-dislike-them/830185/34 "2019-02-28T01:06:25Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > The Destroyer series by Warren MurphyandRichard Sapir, > > I read the first 15 books. Watched the movie, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins a couple times. > > I recently reread books 1-3 and found the writing very simplistic and the stories just silly. > > I had a milder reaction rereading The Matt Helm books by Donald Hamilton. They hold up better, but the writing is a bit overblown. Lots of long speeches about how great America is. It gets annoying. > > My tastes changed over the past 25 years. When I was kid I read the Executioner series as well as the other man’s adventures series published by Gold Eagle Publishing (Deathlands, Able Team, Phoenix Force among them). Looking back they were definitely simplistic and silly like you described the Destroyer series. I didn’t realize till a few years ago that Gold Eagle Publishing was just an imprint of Harlequin Books-the company that publishes all those cheesy romance books. Which explains a lot about the quality of the books I read. ---
**Author:** ![P-man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/p-man/32/3606_2.png) [@P-man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/P-man)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2019, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-re-read-favorite-books-and-dislike-them/830185/35 "2019-02-28T01:56:41Z")
I’m guessing Catcher in the Rye wouldn’t hold up well for me. When I was in elementary school one of my teachers read us My Side of the Mountain, and I loved it. I also enjoyed reading it myself. However, I struggled to get through parts of it when I read it to one of our sons. There were a lot of lengthy descriptions that I zoned out on or skipped over as a kid. Reading aloud I found these passages excruciating. As an adult I got to host the author, Jean Craighead George, at the library where I worked. I’m glad that happened before I had the negative experience with the book. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2019, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-re-read-favorite-books-and-dislike-them/830185/36 "2019-02-28T02:02:52Z")
The Hobbit. I’ve read The Lord of the Rings several times, but the one time I went back to read The Hobbit as an adult, I couldn’t tolerate the cutesy style. ---
**Author:** ![pkbites](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pkbites/32/204_2.png) [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2019, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-re-read-favorite-books-and-dislike-them/830185/37 "2019-02-28T07:18:39Z")
When I was in high school in the mid-70’s [The Outsiders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outsiders_(novel)) was required reading for a Basic Comm class. I liked it and we were all impressed with how it was written by a teenager like us. When I was in my 40’s I tried reading it again. I couldn’t believe I ever liked that pile of pig slop. It was obviously written by a child. A child who was probably a loner and an outcast and only guessing about the things she wrote about. Just my adult opinion of it, though. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2019, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-re-read-favorite-books-and-dislike-them/830185/38 "2019-02-28T07:47:47Z")
theres a book called “the corner store” by albert idell its about a family that ran what would be either a dollar or a convenience store in lower/working class philly neighborhood around 1938 and its customers I think it would be a great movie Now the books written in the early 50s so there’s quite a bit of criticism of Roosevelt and the new deal some justified and some not but it rankles more now than it did when I read it as a teen …… ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2019, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-re-read-favorite-books-and-dislike-them/830185/39 "2019-02-28T08:42:47Z")
Pretty much what Chronos said in his post, with the addition that the last time I read “The Last Battle” (quite a few years ago) it was a grim slog getting through it. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2019, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-re-read-favorite-books-and-dislike-them/830185/40 "2019-02-28T11:14:15Z")
Golden Age SF - I used to devour the bound collections of _Galaxy_ and _Astounding_ in my uni library, as well as novels. Very little of it still holds up for me in the same way. I tried rereading _Citizen of the Galaxy_ a short while back and couldn’t get past the early bit and how much of it was a Kipling fanfic. I tried rereading _The Stars My Destination_ end of last year, a novel I could have _sworn_ I loved, and just\* couldn’t \*with the rapist “hero” anymore. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-re-read-favorite-books-and-dislike-them/830185.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-re-read-favorite-books-and-dislike-them/830185.md?page=3)