My friends and I were having a discussion about our favourite books and we talked about “being too late” to appreciate a book. I kind of get the sentiment and was wondering if others agree. So one of my favourite books of all time is Perks of Being a Wallflower and read it when I was 17 and I remember just thinking about it for a long time and always going back to it. It just cut so deep unlike anything else. I wondered if I had read it now at 29 if it would have nearly the same impact.
Also, I read Looking For Alaska for the first time this year and while I enjoyed it, I found myself wondering how blown away I would have been reading it as a teenager. I just know I would have appreciated it so much more and while I still love John Green I don’t know if his books will ever hit me the same again.
On the other hand, I’m sure there are books that I didn’t appreciate before that I certainly would now!
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I remember reading To Kill A Mockingbird when I was 15 ( many years ago). I hated “required reading books”. Loved TKAM. I was reprimanded in study hall for reading it. Gave me crap about The Grapes of Wrath also. Couldn’t tell you a thing about what I was required to read.
I hoped that things had changed in the last 60 years
I maintain that half of the “classics” we read in school are given to us too young. That’s why so many american kids end up hating reading— being forced to read old books that are a chore to get through, is not what captures the interest of a young reader.
Schools should start off with more modern works, things from the past half-century at minimum, before hucking kids into the “classics”. Even if they are as good as the literary world seems to think, kids can’t possibly know that, because “classic” is a comparative term, and they don’t have the most solid basis for it. It’s like starting off a new whiskey drinker with a 21-year single-malt— sure they could like it right away, but what do they have to compare its quality to?
Plus, just my opinion… a lot of “the classics” are boring and tough to get through even with that solid base of reference!
Absolutely. I teach high school English and I disagree with so many of the books we’re expected to teach. It’s so hard for teens who have so little life experience to understand these books.
I agree. My mom didn’t care if we read comic books, because at least we were reading. I liked reading anyway, but I knew lots kids while growing up for whom comics was literally the only reading they did.
Now kids get to watch all their super-heros in movies, so future generations may just decide to skip the comics, and their reading skills will suffer for it.
Couldn’t agree more.
I agree. My school made us read Holes in the 7th grade by Louis Sachar and it still is one of the best reading experiences to date. Classics like Jane Eyre were painful to read in high school but I am glad that middle school was enjoyable.
It’s not solely an American thing. I remember the short story about a woman who got married at a very young age, she moved to her husband’s parents house and her husband left to work in another country, got a new family there and never came back. We were 11-12 at the time. My favorite show was iCarly at the time, I had no comprehension of anything that happened in that story
In the UK everybody reads a specific set of classic works. I think there are two reasons. The good reason is that it gives everybody a common vocabulary. They will all have read A Christmas Carol, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and An Inspector Calls. (And maybe some others too). The not so good reason, I think, is that these books are in the public domain.
Absolutely. I actually haven’t read Perks of Being a Wallflower for this reason. Feels like it would’ve been a book I loved when I was a teenager, and I don’t think it would be as meaningful to me now. Had a similar thing happen with A Wrinkle in Time when I read it in college: it’s a great book, but I wished I’d read it as a kid for maximum impact.
I don’t have such a good memory myself, soo that’s super possible to me.
I’ve read the same book twice, because I didn’t remember reading it. I just figured it out when I was about to post my review on Goodreads. It was not a very good book.
Mine was the ‘Symptoms of Being Human’. I read it as a junior and it really helped explain a lot of the feelings I had around others and my own gender. Got me started looking into things and shortly after I realized I was trans. In a not so subtle was that book saved my life and I really wish I could have read it in middle school when I was at my lowest.
My life’s background colour would be very different if I had read Percy Jackson when I was a child instead of in my thirties.
As someone who grew up with them, I think Percy Jackson along with the spin-offs is kind of underrated as a cultural touchstone.
I feel like I was a really lucky kid, my mum introduced me to some really good books when I was young and we’d have discussions about them. I read The Stand at ten, then Pillars of the Earth, I read a lot of Sharon Penman and Barbara Erskine. I was a really mature kid and I had read the entirety of the children’s library by the age of eight so I was introduced to more mature books quite early.
After I had finished a book me and my mum would spend hours talking about them, like what would we do differently? How did it make you feel? What was the author trying to say? The gift of reading from my mum is the best gift that I have ever received.
I understand this approach wouldn’t work for everyone but for me it was the right one.
Our mandatory reading in high school Literature and English. Steinbeck and Orwell, and other older English authors aren’t really great for 12 to 14 year olds.
I just want to read all the books that I’ve read in the Lockdown period and I think after that I must be a completely different person for sure
I’d argue, at least in my opinion, that if a book you read years ago didn’t hold up as an adult, then it probably wasn’t that good to begin with.
With that being said, I’m in my early 30’s, and I’d read a good handful of Goosebumps books for the first time last year on Halloween. I found myself really enjoying them, and realized just how dark they were for children’s literature (especially The Haunted Mask). They gave me that nostalgic feeling of being a kid again, and reminded me of the times when I was afraid of everything. They did make me wish I’d read them as a kid, but I appreciated them all the more for pushing the envelope on the horror elements (especially for a younger audience).
Even if I’m not in the “target audience” (for lack of a better term), do I at least gain some sort of perspective or insight from the main characters? And are the stories themselves well written? If both answers are “yes”, then they’re worth reading no matter how old I am. That’s how I view it anyway.
I missed the whole YA thing and wish I had read more of the genre at the age because I think I would’ve loved them, especially Harry Potter.
I read Harry Potter in high school and I wish I would have read it earlier.
I give it full credit for sparking my interest in reading!
Reading a good guides to murder was amazing, but I think I would appreciate it more when I was like 16/17.
Anne of the Green Gables. I had a middlegrade books phase after college, and I wish I read it and met Anne’s character when I was only a teenager.
Perks didn’t cut deep enough for me as a home school kid, but I read it again later and now that I teach high school it hits hard.
The Awakening saved me from a bad marriage when I read it again at 27.
The one that I’m always sad about is The Great Gatsby. I teach it to my juniors but they just aren’t old enough to really “get it.” They haven’t had enough life experiences to understand the deeper themes.