Oh yes. Disney did sometimes take a mediocre book and turn it into a good movie.
But NOT Winnie the Pooh! He can Burn in Purgatory for several millenia as far as I’m concerned for the schmaltzy mess he made out of one of my childhood favourites…
I’ve never read this book, but there was a Netflix adaptation that my toddler daughter asked to see (because the image was of a “bunners” XD) and holy crud was that a tearjerker.
I read the Narnia books as a teen, and a non-Christian, hoping for a fun fantasy adventure; and while I did get that, and enjoyed the books overall, I didn’t fine the Christian stuff particularly subtle (nor enjoyable). It detracted from the books for me, but not to the point that I disliked them.
I muddled through it in English when I first moved to the US, and the scifi concepts were ones I’d never been exposed to before. Pretty much 95% of it must have gone over my head. That’s probably one to reread some day.
I’d reread Zelazny’s Doorways in the Sand. I do every couple of years. Usually after rereading Pratchett’s Going Postal.
If 1984 is considered to be too adult, try Animal Farm. I thought it was more interesting than 1984 when I first read it in high school.
One book that was fun for me to read back then was Treasure Island. It has so many phrases that are part of our vocabulary today: pieces of eight, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, walk the plank. If you like the Pirates of the Caribbean Disney ride, it sort of supplements it.
Of course, the real classic dystopia is Plato’s Republic. Orwell’s got nothing on him, when it comes to oppressive societies.
And A Wrinkle in Time, I can fairly say, is one of the books that made me who and what I am today.
Okay, how about books that I read to my kids before bed and they loved them and I was surprised they were well-written hard sci-fi but there were fifty-four in the series so they tired of them halfway through but I was hooked so I had to find the rest which wasn’t easy because they were out of print at that point so I was scouring thrift stores and my kids were mocking me but i didn’t care I had to find out What Happens Next and it was all worth it because the last two books turned out to be some of the most fun sci-fi I’ve read and despite the ending which means their return to normal lives won’t happen anytime soon, SO satisfying…
.
[takes a breath]
.
… Animorphs.
There’s the platonic ideal of an example of an author’s name becoming an adjective 
I hadn’t read it as a kid, but it was one of the books we had to read in my Kiddie Lit class in college. I fell in love with Mr. Toad.
I tried reading it as adult, but it put me to sleep. I think it’s a good one to save for the kids.
I’ve found it very difficult to revisit favorite books from my youth. Almost everything I once found unique or clever (mostly SF, but many other genres) has been repeatedly recycled by movies, television, and other books to the point that it all seems quite stale and unimaginative. Reminding myself that these books were what influenced all the imitations that followed doesn’t make them any more enjoyable.
That said, When I was teaching, I needed to reread the books I was assigning. All Quiet on the Western Front and Siddhartha were still engrossing reads for adult-me.
A few years ago, I reread the John Byrne run on Fantastic Four and it still seemed fresh and exciting.
It strikes me as McCaffery trying to be progressive about gay issues, but in a way that’s now very dated. She also believed that the act of being sodomized releases hormones that cause straight men to become gay, which is just plain wrong.
I have heard this about her, but have never seen it confirmed. Do you have a cite?
Anything you read as a child that is on the American Library Association’s list of banned or challenged books. Just to see what the fuss is all about.
- Anything by Greg Bear or David Brin*.
- I had a single book of short stories by Stanley Weinbaum (actually great stuff, we nicked the book from a hotel in the Greek Islands, but it was from USA probably). Some interesting stories of humans contacting aliens in places such as Mars.
*Re-reading The Uplift War as an adult was interesting. It seemed a lot less fabulous and more immature than I could have imagined. This book is sort of a prequel–or a parallel story–to his Startide Rising, for which he won major awards. Overall, it’s a great series with “realistic” alien civilizations and humankind’s place in that mess.
Interesting idea. I found this list from the ACLU for 1990-2000. That’s about as old as I could find, to limit it to books that would have been available when I was a child.
I’ve read lots of the books on that list, but many of those are classics like Lord of the Flies, which probably do hold up, though a thread (or digression) about changing interpretations of classics in the 35 years since I was in an English class would be interesting.
Others are a huge WTF. Really A Light in the Attic? I know acknowledging puberty is one step away from sex, but seriously, you need to check yourself if you’re idea of a threat is Judy Blume.
I don’t think I’d have a problem with my 10 year old reading anything on that list. Except Madonna’s Sex, only because of what it sells for today, and I can remember it being generally poorly received and ending up in the remainder bin.
Yes, that is one of the ones I did re-read as an adult, and still liked. Too bad Brin seemed to step away from fiction writing, as the Uplift series had a nice way of being both epic and personal that I really like.
I never got into Greg Bear. I think I read Eon when it first came out, got angry at the cliff hanger ending, and never read anything else he wrote.
You might find “Queen of Angels” and “Slant” interesting. They’re kind of a Blade Runner-esque world, set in a near-future Seattle, with a female cop protagonist. And a really interesting secret agent subplot (in Slant, IIRC). Some cool nanotech, body modifications, etc.
A book site claims there are other books in the series, but I think these two are a miniseries, with the other books (Moving Mars and Heads) probably just co-existing in the same universe as the first two.
I’ve read half of them. Anyone know what terrible danger Where’s Waldo? poses?