Rereading books as you get older

[Aequitas]

So, I'm currently in midst of rereading All the King's Men, a book I last read when I was 16. I'm 24 now and it's been a really interesting reread. When I was 16, I mostly just appreciated the story itself, but now that I'm 24 I really appreciate the language and relate a bit more to the main character who has had his failures and setbacks in a way I didn't when I was 16.

This isn't the first time I've reread something and gained insight into how I've changed more than any insights into life the book itself is trying to give. My favorite book series (The Wheel of Time) is something I've read every couple of years since I was 10 and I always see how I've changed by what I appreciate. Sometimes I appreciate a different character or appreciate the writing more or in a different way. Does anyone else have similar experiences with book rereads? I haven't really had the same effect from a rewatched movie or replayed video game. Video games are usually not as cool to me when I replay them but books tend to just get better.

[Smiling Hobo]

I always re-read Ender's Game and/or Speaker For the Dead every few years or so, as well...and each time, I find something new that captures my attention that I never noticed before. It's fun.

*Nibbles on kitten*

[mispeled]

It depends on the book, really. good literature gets better as you get older, because, despite all the insight you thought you had at 15, you have more experience at 25, or 35, etc. This extra experience helps you appreciate the book more.

However, try as I might, all the trash fantasy and sci-fi I devoured when I was fifteen and still remember fondly doesn't age well. I don't go back an reread some of the things I loved back then, simply because I know from experience it ruins the story. Good fiction always looks bigger and deeper than it is. Bad fiction is worse once you're old enough to see the holes.

[sje46]

I don't think Animorphs ages well at all. The prose is...not that great. Although I will always have great love for the story.

[Zamfir]

I don't think Animorphs ages well at all. The prose is...not that great. Although I will always have great love for the story.

WTF? When I was 9 I loved those, and also when I was 10. I still love them, and I will love them when I am 12.

[Midnight]

I don't think Animorphs ages well at all. The prose is...not that great. Although I will always have great love for the story.

too much goddamn nostalgia. I can never say a bad word about those books.

[Woodsman]

I always re-read Ender's Game and/or Speaker For the Dead every few years or so, as well...and each time, I find something new that captures my attention that I never noticed before. It's fun.

Same thing here^^
Orson scott card is my hero!

I also keep rereading the feist books for some reason, which aren't that good to begin with :s

[animeHrmIne]

I reread almost every book I've ever read, sometime multiple times a year. I simply cannot ever remember the plot*, so it's like reading the books again for the first time, with the bonuses of being able to concentrate on the subplots and understanding the world already.

I particularly like to reread the Tamora Pierce books, as they age really well. At a young age, they're about adventure. But as you get older, you have a greater understanding of the things like the way the treats sexuality and orientation, gender and gender identity, and the way the world works.

*Seriously, it's terrible. I'm a genius when it comes to things like in-world facts (I could tell you anything you wanted to know about Rowling's or Pierce's worlds) but I couldn't tell you what happened in the fifth Harry Potter book, especially not chronologically.

[Sir_Elderberry]

I reread Ender's Gamea lot. I'll do Dune and Hitchhiker's Guide periodically as well. From childhood, I frequently revisit A Wrinkle In Time.

[zug]

I never throw a book away because I can always, ALWAYS read it again and get something more out of it. I'm a chronic reader with a low budget, though, so it's out of necessity as much as anything else.

The Harry Potter books have gotten better as I aged (24 now, I think I was 13ish when they first came out). And Ender's Game was funnier when I reread it 6 months ago because, as a recent comic pointed out, it would never happen on the internet I know and love today.

Also I reread the Wrinkle in Time series just last week, it is still marvelous.

[The EGE]

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman gets better and better every time. Orson Scott Card and Douglas Adams do as well.

Interestingly, the older I get, the more I appreciate the deft prose of Dr. Seuss.

[JayDee]

However, try as I might, all the trash fantasy and sci-fi I devoured when I was fifteen and still remember fondly doesn't age well.

I have been hunting down some things like that recently. But while I can ask myself 'why on earth did I think this was any good', I don't have any trouble enjoying it. Either it can take me back a ways, and I appreciate how cool something is, even as it is awful; or it is simply So Bad It's Good. I still absolutely love the original Pool of Radiance novelisation, for instance, because it really reads like the 80s DnD video game novelisation it is.

On the complete other end of the scale are books that I read and enjoyed as a child, and re-reading them as an adult I can see so many reasons why they're so good. Books like the Wizard of Earthsea and sequels. Or Finders Keepers and The Timekeeper by Emily Rodda. I mean yeah, what animeHrmIne said:

But as you get older, you have a greater understanding of the things like the way the treats sexuality and orientation, gender and gender identity, and the way the world works.

When I re-read Finders Keepers not long back it was little things like the fact that the burly fire-fighter-esque crew that drive up in the big red engine to fix the tear in reality is all-female that I was extra impressed by. Not something I'd've even noticed as a kid, though.

[cathrl]

I've reread Lord of the Rings more times than I can count. I'd like to think I now get more out of it than my initial wild crush on Aragorn (I was ten, okay?)

I think the book which has affected me most differently as an adult is Peter Pan. I read it as a kid and it was a fun story. I read it as an adult and cried my eyes out.

[Ralith The Third]

I also keep rereading the feist books for some reason, which aren't that good to begin with :s

HERETIC! BURN HIM!

[Jahoclave]

Yeah, I can't say that I reread a lot of books. Mainly because I have too many books that need reading. I suppose I reread Tom Sawyer and Huck Fin, but I think I wasn't even ten yet when I first read them.

I've reread things like the Hitchhiker's series, but mainly out of a study of the writing rather than enjoyment. Which, is mainly the only reason I reread things; excepting Hills Like White Elephants for the millionth time. If there's one thing about being an English major that sucks, it's rereading that story over and over again.

[darwinwins]

from time to time i find myself re-reading a haruki murakami book. i've re-read norwegian wood, sputnik sweetheart and hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world. different times in my life have made those books more impacting than when i first read them.

another one i've read more than once is the gone away world. fantastic read but also you begin to pick up on the satire and social commentary of the contemporary world as we in our late 20s have experienced the world.

[PAstrychef]

I reread all the time-sometimes I just want an easy book to read in bed, one where I know the ending and like the flow of language. Some books are annual events, some are picked up by mood, or by which box is most interesting as I unpack.
I'm fascinated by how my current state affects the things I notice in a book. If I've been dealing with politics the politics pop out, if I'm dealing with relationships the connections pop out and so on.
One thing makes a great book a great book is this ability to read it over and over and still get new and deeper things from it. I'm a fairly old fart already but there are plenty of books I read 20 years ago that I still get new stuff out of every time. When I was 8 or 9 I read The Phantom Tollbooth for the first time. Wonderful story, great puns on names, etc. I continued to check in with that book all the way through using as the basis for a linguistic study as a grad student. Every time, I found a new pun or double entdre or some point of character would spring out. Much fun!
And at the same age I loved the Bobssey twins series. Trite, horrible silly books. But love them I did, even if rereading them now makes me cringe. Seeing the way that cultural norms were painted with a broad brush in those books showed how good literature worked in mysterious ways.

[foresthouse]

Agreed so much on Ender's Game. A lot of books are like that for me. Each time I re-read a Discworld book I pick up new jokes and/or plot bits I missed before. I always get new insights from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court when I re-read it. Mark Twain: genius. (And even though it's a bit OT, the only *movie* that ever makes me feel that way is Good Will Hunting. Every time I re-watch it I feel like I'm seeing it from a different perspective.)

[PAstrychef]

So how old are all of you Ender's Game re readers? And when did you first read it? I have found it to not age as gracefully as I would have hoped it to. So enjoy it while it still says important things to you.

[Sir_Elderberry]

So how old are all of you Ender's Game re readers? And when did you first read it? I have found it to not age as gracefully as I would have hoped it to. So enjoy it while it still says important things to you.

I first read it when I was twelve, and am now seventeen.

[MooglesLord]

Like a lot of people in this thread, I too Love rereading the Ender's Game series. Not just the first two books, even though they hold the most meaning and power for me, but the entire series as a whole. This includes the parallel series centered around Bean, which I found fascinating. I constantly reread books, because I'm rather poor at the moment and can't afford more. The original Dragonlance Chronicles and Tales are good for reading, as well as anything by Terry Brooks. The series I reread most frequently, aside from the Ender stuff, is The Sword of Truth saga by Terry Goodkind. That man can write a book.

[dumspirospera]

Lord of the Rings first read them when I was 6

[cathrl]

Lord of the Rings first read them when I was 6

And? So did my son. If you can't find a single thing to say about how your experience of reading it was different when you were older, it doesn't sound like you got much out of it.

[Adacore]

There's a lot of stuff I read as a teenager that I enjoyed at the time that was, in retrospect, just cheap trashy thrillers. Tom Clancy stuff, for example, I used to love but just can't read any more. Other stuff has aged better, although even things like Diamond Age and Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson) seem considerably flimsier now than they did a decade ago. Still great books, but not as awe-inspiring as I thought they were as a teenager.

And then of course there's the far end of that spectrum, with books that I read (or had read to me and my little sister) when I was much younger, like The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, which my seven year old self remembers as an awesome, complex epic of a fantasy novel, but now I know it's actually a relatively simple kids book. On a similar non-book-related theme, I remember watching Through The Dragon's Eye when I first started primary school and it was awesome; having seen some episodes recently it's quite unbelievably bad.

So how old are all of you Ender's Game re readers? And when did you first read it? I have found it to not age as gracefully as I would have hoped it to. So enjoy it while it still says important things to you.

I'd say I was about 15 when I first read it and am now 25. I'd say it's aged pretty well.

[the_bandersnatch]

On a similar non-book-related theme, I remember watching Through The Dragon's Eye when I first started primary school and it was awesome; having seen some episodes recently it's quite unbelievably bad.

Oh my word the memories! I watched this like 20 years ago at Primary School and loved it at the time! I'd completely forgotten about it until just reading your post. I've looked up the page you linked and can understand it would be horrendously bad to an adult's eyes, so I think I'll just leave it as a fond memory.

[Izawwlgood]

I just reread the Red Mars trilogy, the Hyperion Cantos, and am currently listening to the Gunslinger on audiobook over my commutes (I picked it up for the marathon and haven't finished it yet).

I feel you catch more nuance if you know where the story is going, and what the author intended with various messages. And some, like Rise of Endymion's surprise at the end, and Ann Clayborn's decision to live while chanting "On Mars, On Mars, On Mars..." still choke me up.

[clockworkmonk]

Man, for a while there, I was re-reading Dune monthly. I don't quite know why, other than that I really wanted to read it again and again. Did not enjoy the sequels one bit, but I absolutely love the first one. Other than that, I've reread HG2G nearly as many times as I've reread Dune.

[pineapplepie]

I can read some books over and over again, like Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, but rereading YA/kid's books when you're a bit too old for them kind of destroys the story a bit. It's like trick-or-treating for Halloween: it's never going to be as good as it was when you were a kid.

[LoganCale]

I've reread most of the books I like, often quite a few years after I originally read them. Rereading Neal Stephenson's books in the past few years, I realized how much they helped shape who I am due to my reading many of them when I was around fifteen. I also appreciate subtle things I missed before.

Christopher Moore, Douglas Adams Terry Pratchett have all proved to be good rereads as well.

I've generally come to recognize the sort of book that will be a disappointment if reread and avoid doing so, while others I think to myself while reread that I'll come back to down the road and gain additional enjoyment from it.

[mitch1423]

I've read the Harry Potter Series several times. I understand it better each time. I'm also currently reading Dracula, and I'm planning to read it again in a year or so after i get finished to better understand it, as it has a pretty complex story line.

[MTK]

Sadly, most of Philip K. Dick's stuff doesn't age too well. I still love Ubik, but when I reread it about a year ago, I found myself impatiently skipping over the trite character descriptions to get to the juice.

[Izawwlgood]

I've read the Dune series (well, up to Children) and the Hyperion quartet approx. a dozen times in the last 10 years. I still get teary eyed at the end of Rise of Endymion.

[Sheikh al-Majaneen]

I don't think Animorphs ages well at all. The prose is...not that great. Although I will always have great love for the story.

I reread every single book two years ago.

Didn't particularly like how they killed off my favourite of the main characters. But the way it was done...that was well written. I do think I even shed a tear the first time I read that part. I wish we had had enough money when I was kid to finish reading the whole thing back then. As it was, I only read about the first twenty back then, and decided to read the remaining thirty a decade later for some closure. (lol, it took like a week and a half of reading after work...those hundred pages flew by quickly).

I only owned a few of the books, all earlier ones, and in high school and college about once a year I would reread the book that the ellimist first appeared. I always appreciated and sympathised powerfully with Rachel's sheer weariness, paired with the lovecraftian horrorish feeling that specific book gave me (even on like the eighth read). Most of the others never recaptured that feeling, even when the ellimist and his arch nemesis were involved.

After thinking about it, I find it odd that kid's literature (ie, Goosebumps, Animorphs, Harry Potter) from when I was a kid was disturbing, freakish, and sometimes very human. I have the feeling that childrens' stories are not what they used to be in that regard.

[paravatar]

My favorite re-read is Robinson Crusoe,
it was read to me by my parents and grandma,
reread it many times
and now I revisit the book especially in high-intensity learning periods.

It never fails

p

[Retne]

I also keep rereading the feist books for some reason, which aren't that good to begin with :s

Depending on which books you are reading I agree with you. If you are talking about his first few books though I kindly dissagree. I reread select feist books every couple years and can say I think a few of them are pretty good. Magician(authors preferred edition) had a nice rolling ramble to it. Not to mention it combines the 2 classic sword and horse coming of age cliches and does a good job at both.

I am also an avid rereader of Pratchet, Adams and Butcher. I don't think I could ever get tired of reading hitchhiker or mort.

[BogusCraft]

I recently reread "The Catcher in the Rye." When I first read it I was about 12, and it was an alright story. I reread about 6 months ago (26 years old) and It was one of the best, funniest stories ever. I was just wayyy to young to understand any of it at 12 years old.

[WaterToFire]

I'm reading Dune for the third or fourth time, and loving it all over again. Damn, Frank's a much better writer than the unholy aberration that is Brian/Kevin.

[voicedotter]

I'm now 17 and I have read plenty of books and reread most of them and some of them have gotten better, like Pratchet books and Gemmell books, as I age, some not so much, like the old Warrior cats books by Erin Hunter which I read 4 years ago and had read nearly all of them.

I can also recite the plot for most of them as well. I think that may be because my head only partially fills at school which is kinda annoying because it means I fill my head with information on useless things, like the overall plot of various books, shows, red vs. blue etc.

[JLauer]

I always get new insights from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court when I re-read it. Mark Twain: genius.

I reread A Connecticut Yankee the other day and was simply amazed by the amount of material I missed in my first read through.