I was talking to a friend about comedic / farcical literature the other day, and Catch-22 by Joseph Heller came up. That made me remember - I first read this book when I was about 15 years old. Or rather I read about 80% of it, didn’t quite finish it that time. I forced myself through it because I had heard it was subversive and intelligent and challenging, and I got nothing out of it. I didn’t see the humor, I didn’t get any political commentary, it was just a series of absurd things happening to absurd characters with no rhyme or reason.
I reread that book two years ago and damn near pissed myself laughing on every other page, but then the ending rolled around and it hit so hard. That sudden switch from absurdist comedy to heavy, bleak, depressing, and then he gives you just this glimmer of hope at the end anyway. I found it absolutely brilliant, and yet I kept thinking back to how none of this connected with me when I first read it.
Do you have books like that? Books that just plain went over your head, that you didn’t have the maturity to appreciate, that were too difficult in style or subject matter, and that you’ve come to appreciate years later?
I pulled Warrior Woman by Marion Zimmer Bradley off my mom’s shelves when I was ten. It was very definitely not something I should have been reading!
^(bit ironic considering the pedophilia)
I was in middle school the first time I read Memoirs of a Geisha. Still really enjoyed the book.
It hit different on re reads now that I’m getting close to 30. It’s still a great book.
I think it was: I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. Or one similar where the main character is just fk nuts crazy and it was a lot for my 8th grade brain to take in.
Night by Elie Wiesel. Third grade.
Then again, it prepared me for my life.
Im in 10th grade and we read that. Damn that book was dark. But why do they have 3rd graders reading a book like night?
I was curious on my own.
For some reason my elementary school library had Maus. I understood what it was about historically, but i didn’t really understand jt emotionaly
At age 9, I found my mom’s erotica hidden under her bed.
I read the first 100 pages of War and Peace when I was 10. At that point I realised I was just reading the words and not the book so gave up.
Shakespeare, chaucer… Didn’t see any of the humour at all as a teenager, and learning it in class didn’t help.
Now reading them as an adult, I’m cackling
my best takeaway from Shakespeare is when Hamlet asks the gravedigger (who doesn’t know he’s talking to Hamlet) “upon what ground” Hamlet lost his wits, and the gravedigger is all “whY, hErE iN DEnmArK”. what a nice epiphany to realize shakespeare’s humor is supposed to be a little dumb at times, as it should be accesible to the masses
I think every book I’ve ever read reads differently the more I learn.
But probably the ones that meet your description most clearly would be Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies and Flowers for Algernon. Required reading in grammar school, and I dimly grasped what they were supposed to be about, but I hadn’t a clue what they were really trying to say.
Flowers for Algernon is one of the saddest books I’ve ever read. Remembering Charlie’s decline at the ending is making me almost cry. My 10th grade honors lit teacher gave an unforgettable lecture on Lord of the Flies. The amount of symbolism William Golding can jam into ~200 pages. Many people have theories about the book, and I think Golding intended for all of them to be correct. Fun fact: If you translate Lord of the Flies in Hebrew the word is Beelzebub.
invisible monsters by chuck palahniuk. i was thirteen. 🙃
Lotr trilogy. I was 12. I had just watched the first movie at the cinema with my cousin. I tought the books would be full of epic battles and crazy magic. Let’s say it wasn’t what I was expecting lol. Fortunatly I re-read the books 20 years later and I enjoyed them much more
This is exactly my story with LOTR
For me it’s a book you can enjoy on multiple levels. I first read at 6, and obviously missed lots of subtlety but adored it and absorbed the mythology like I did for greek and Roman mythology (and Sunday school come to that). I still get new stuff from it many rereads later, and reading it to my 7 year old who is experiencing it his own way. ATM he’s convinced Bombadil is going to solve all their problems and defeat sauron.
Pedants corner: LOTR isn’t a trilogy, it was always meant to be a single volume.
Pedant’s counterpoint: how was it published?
It’s exactly the opposite for me I read Lotr as a teenager and was obsessed I knew whole paragraphs by heart I reread it after 20 years or so quite recently and man I couldn’t stand it I really hate Elf’s and Tom Bombadil but most energy took me read all Songs again and In the end the whole Good is super good, Evil is The Evilest Evil that ever do only Evil was so annoying. I blame Joe Abercrombie and all Grimdark I read over the years perfect heroes are not for me anymore.
Fuck Tom Bombadil.
Man… Tom is one of my favorite parts of the whole books. I grew up having my dad read them aloud to my brother and I. I read them aloud to my own boys, at least a couple of times too. The ents, Tom, and the elves and all of their songs… those are what makes the books so different and special.
I always imagined that it was in Tom’s woods that the ent wives had gone… If they were anywhere in middle earth still, it was there, in his forest, with him.
I’m telling you, those Grimdark books “satanic music” and years on my back filtered my positive side away, what left is shrivelled husk that LoL so hard when Glokta interrogates poor fellow and bit by bit cuts off his fingers with a meat cleaver :-P ( The First Law is a masterpiece). To be true I read The Hobbit to my 8 year old daughter now and she likes it I will read her Lotr too. She doesn’t have to know I’m dead inside just yet tho ;-) When she’s closer to adulthood I tell her about Berserk, Song of ice and fire, We are the dead, TFL and she’ll join me in being a husk ( I feel like I should add evil laugh here)
I listened to the audio books as an adult and they are so freaking good. They were my biking books. I was only allowed to listen to the audio book while road biking. Ended up riding 30 miles one day cuz I didn’t want to stop.
I read LOTR to my son, having last read it in 1990 or so. I’d completely forgotten about all the elf poetry
Same. I read the trilogy in middle school and have been meaning to reread it a an adult. I’m sure I missed lots of stuff!
I think I was about 10-11 when my mum first read me LotR and I was obsessed. This was way before the movies, for I am old (and I kind of hate you for reminding me that the movies have already been out for 20 years). It was my first introduction to more “serious/adult” fantasy after having devoured The Chronicles of Narnia and The Neverending Story (boy, was I pissed when that book ended - I actually thought it would somehow magically continue on forever… ).
That being said, I can totally see how after watching the films, to a kid, the books would a bit of a slog. It also helps that my mum is a fantastic narrator and storyteller. I’m just now listening to LotR on audiobook and I definitely have a newfound respect for Peter Jackson and his crew for keeping the integrity of the main story intact, while having to cut out so much side plot and lore.
Same, but before the movies. I was 10. Fuck me Nazgûl are terrifying at that age.
Tolkein wasn’t a novelist and never intended to be one. He was an Oxford Don who loved mythology/folklore and linguistics and it shows. He wanted to create a body of folklore for English people. I think the pipilarity of the books shows he was pretty successful. But the man did not know how to write a “ripping yarn”. His pacing and out of control expositioning ruin the flow of the story. The filmmakers did an absolutely brilliant job of “fixing” that to make the movie enjoyable without destroying the story and characters. But seeing the movies first is sure to make the books seem even duller, especially to a younger person.
I got to John Le Carré when I was a James Bond obsessed teenager. I knew it was supposed to be more “mature” but I read multiple of his books and was bored out of my mind, but kept going try to find the good stuff.
I came back to him in my 20s and reread the books I hadn’t liked as well as a few others and found that I really enjoyed them a lot more. I just had to put some time into the workforce and the boring adult world to appreciate the kind of subtle personal dramas he writes in the midst of political and espionage settings. And I also had to not compare them to the Bond formula so much. Now he’s one of my favorite authors.
I read a few in my late teens and I really liked them, oddly I think the part that stuck with me most was the “a whole inch of cream cuff!” Line from I think the first Smiley book. Cracked me up then and still does.
Dune. I was 14.
I’m 16 and read the first two Dune novels recently. They’re good, but it’s like reading the Bible lmao. And I’ve still got 4 more on my shelf that I’m simultaneously looking forward to and dreading.
Loved Dune in year 10 (so a bit older than you were), love it even more when older - I’ve re-read it several times (and some of the sequels, but they just kept getting weirder and not as good).
The movie was a disappointment though.
Same.
Same. I’ve read the original hexology many times since, and every time I discover new themes that didn’t click for me previously.
Probably the biggest aspects I missed on my first readthrough were the heavy implicit critiques of fascism and colonialism, as well as the relatively unique nature of the fictional “science” tying this particular sci-fi hexology together.
Wicked, when I was 10.
IT by Stephen King. I was 12ish when I read it for the first time. Fucked me up real good
I hear about people who read IT at such a young age, and I cannot even imagine lol
I was about 10 or so when I read it the first time. Years later I heard about the supposed gangbang (see note) scene in it and I went “Wait … what gangbang scene?”. Didn’t understood what was happening.
But I was not comfortable in the shower for a pretty long time afterwards … and around rainwater drains.
Note: I would like to state that technically it is not a gangbang and more like running train. Still a fucked up circumstance considering the characters’ ages though.
I read Like Water for Chocolate when I was around 10.
I was 12. Right before, I had read The perfume and the next one was The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I got premature existential crises.