I just finished rereading Fahrenheit 451. I haven’t picked it up since high school and, though I liked it then, the experience was nothing like now. It was like turning on your kitchen faucet and finding, instead of water, unearthly wine flowing forth. It made me really sit and question if I am living my life with enough wonder or have I lost instead lost myself in the noise and clatter of everyday life. (Am I Clarisse or am I Mildred?) The writing also just seemed so…good. Just the sound and rhythm of the words were pleasing, even removed of all context.
It also has left me desiring to name the first daughter I might have Clarisse, but that may not last.
So who else has picked up book for a second or third time and discovered something amazing where they remembered something mildly pleasant or even horrible before?
I don’t have an immediate answer to your question. I just wanted to say that you made me remember what it was like reading Bradbury for the first time–and yes, it was Fahrenheit 451. He is such a gifted writer. And you have described your experience so beautifully:
For me it was Ivanhoe. I first read it when I was too young, probably eleven or so. I remembered almost nothing from it; it completely baffled me. I decided to try it again when I was thirty, figuring I could now struggle through it–I was astonished at how *fun *it was.
**1984[/] is much, much better than it was in high school - not because of the story or my greater experience with oppression or whatever, but because now I appreciate the language of it much more.
Great Expectations is another one of those Dickens books that people have kids read because it’s about kids. Which is a huge mistake. It wasn’t until college that I realized how funny it was.
Great Expectations is another one I should take time to reread. I read it in high school and my teacher adored it, but I didn’t care for it to much. I should go back and see if her adoration of the book was merited.
Just today, I bought the five “Tales of The City” books (a buck apiece, at a St. Vinnie’s!)
It’s so fun to reread the adventures of MaryAnn and Michael et al. Also poignant to read as my son runs away to San Francisco. Makes me suspect he’ll never come back… I just wish he could find a place to stay like Barbary Lane, and his own Mrs. Madrigal.
Pride and Prejudice. I read it as a teen and found it nice but a little boring. I read it again in my late 20s and fell in love. Austen is funny. Sweet, ironic, honest, and cynical, too. All things I missed the first time around.
Also the middle books in the Anne of Green Gables series. As a pre-teen and young teenager I read all eight books. I found books 4-6 to not be as fun as the others. Now as an adult I see books 6-7 as the week ones and adore books 4 & 5. I love the Pringles now and Captain Jim. I had to be an adult to appreciate and understand Anne’s life as she grew older. Although, book 8 will always be my favorite, and it’s not really even about Anne.
I had all of those feelings about Great Expectations when I read it last year for the first time. About 3/4 of the way through it, it finally hit me “Wow, it really is a great book.”
But I always loved the Scarlet Letter, even when I read it in high school.
I’ve always liked the Narnia books, but when I was a kid, A Horse and his Boy was one of my least favorites of them. The first time I re-read it as an adult, though, I realized just how many layers of symbolism were there that just went right over my head as a kid. It’s now one of my favorites (though I think I still like Voyage of the Dawn Treader better).
I hated Great Expectations so much in high school I never read any other Dickens. I don’t own a copy of course, maybe I should approach it with caution and give it another try.
IME, there are two reasons kids hate Great Expectations:
They are used to thinking of description as supplemental to dialouge–in a great deal of the sorts of fiction kids read, the dialouge and the descriptions are redundant, and so they learn to skip or skim long descriptions. In Gret Expectations, the descriptions often contradict the dialouge: that contradiction is where the humor and irony come from. Take that out, and it’s just a lot of people having strangely intent conversations about nothing.
Kids are used to ignoring class issues. In many things kids read/see, social class is conciously NOT an issue: in TVs and movies, classes mingle much more freely than in reality, and not many other children’s books deal with subtle differences in class. It’s something teachers avoid disucssing because it is, in many ways, more sensitive than race or gender issues. So a lot of kids learn to assume characters are “class neutral”. On top of that, they know NOTHING about 19th C. Britain social classes. Take class issues out of Great Expectations, and it’s really a terrible, terrible book.
A couple of years ago, I picked up Little House on the Prairie, and I was amazed at what I’d missed when I read it as a child. Yes, the writing is definitely aimed at a juvenile audience, but the Wilder books (I’ve picked up and read the rest of them) have a lot of information about the way these people lived, and why they did things. The technological advances in such a short time frame are also amazing to me. In the first book, Wilder explains how Pa Ingalls melted and molded his own bullets every evening, and how he had to be sure to kill a predator on the first shot, because he’d have to go through a series of actions before he could fire his gun again. I think that his gun was a muzzle loader, but I’m not sure of the terminology. I’ve only shot a modern rifle a couple of times, but loading and firing are pretty simple these days. And, of course, I don’t have to make my own bullets, nor do I have to measure and pour the powder and pack it down. Children’s presents are described in some of the books. In the first book, every child gets a pair of mittens and a stick of peppermint candy, except for Laura, who gets her own rag doll. Previously, she had doll which consisted of an old corn cob wrapped in a handkerchief. As a child, I didn’t understand how modern technology has changed consumer goods and expectations. As an adult, well, let’s just say that I’m getting a new computer this week, not because I really need one, but just because I want one.
As an adult, I read Laura Ingalls Wilder from a whole nother perspective in a different way - when I was a kid, all that pioneer stuff was cool and awesome and Pa was just the best dad! Now he’s a fucking irresponsible dickhead and I can’t believe his shit.
Similarly, My Friend Flicka, once you’re an adult, is a fantastic book about the kid’s parents’ marriage. There’s a horse and all wandering around in it, I guess, but the good stuff is in the parents’ relationship and their relationships with their kids.
I was surprised that the Ingalls did NOT live off the land, but lived near and bought supplies from a general store.
I saw The Good Earth on TCM not long ago and dug out the book, which I first read when I was around 12. I remember enjoying it at the time, but what a difference a few decades makes in understanding a lot of things that happen in the book!
The Ingalls did sometimes live off the land, in the sense that they raised or Pa hunted most of the food that the family ate. Sometimes, though, Pa misjudged what the future would hold in store, and sometimes he was just too damn restless to wait for a territory to legally open (LHotP) and he had to abandon his farm before the crop came in. If he’d stayed put, then he could have built up a decent farm, even in the Wisconsin woods. In the first book, he had a decent farm, a snug house, was able to keep a pig, and his family was nearby, near enough that he could help his parents get maple syrup, and since he helped, his family got a share of the syrup and sugar. If he’d stayed put, he could have improved his farm, his girls could have gone to school from the time they were old enough, and his wife could have had a lot more company (and apparently she DID enjoy having a social life). Apparently, though, he wasn’t happy unless he was in new frontier land. But this didn’t stop him from going to the general store (when it was close enough) nearly every evening to gossip with the other men.
The Ingalls family would have been much wealthier if Pa Ingalls didn’t have such itchy feet. And Mary could have gone to the School for the Blind much sooner if the family had had the resources to send her.
I think that he did love his family, but he wasn’t a great provider. It’s clear, from the books, that the Ingalls lived in grinding poverty for much of their lives, but the kids didn’t know any better, at least when they were little. It’s also very clear to me that Pa favored Laura, and enjoyed her tomboyish ways, while Ma definitely favored Mary, because she was ladylike and had blonde hair. Ma clearly didn’t care for Laura’s brown hair.
In the vein of under-appreciated children’s books, I’d like to add Betty MacDonald’s Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series from the '40s and 50’s. As a kid I paid attention, of course, to the misbehaving kid in each vignette. Now, especially after reading them aloud to my kids, I LOVE how she writes about the parents, many of whom are completely over-the-top types just like the ones we run into today–braggers, helicopter parents, etc. The names alone are priceless–I could have chosen “Calliope Ragbag” or “Paraphernalia Grotto” as my screen name. Honestly, though, I’m really more of a “Marge Grapple.”
Re-reading My Family And Other Animals by Gerald Durrell, and really enjoying the gorgeous descriptions of the Corfiot landscape and weather…as well as some of the jokes that went over my head as a child.
I first read it aged 6, as my parents have unusual ideas about what is suitable reading material for small children. They believe if you can read it and it isn’t frankly obscene then it’s fine. I liked animals and books so they got it for me as a birthday present and I loved it.