Timely topic for me as I invested a fairly considerable amount of time this past year rereading some stories I had not read for 20-30 years. I did a deep dive into several of Shakespeare's play that I had not read since high school and also watched movie adaptations of these. My experience this time around was significantly different. Certainly the additional life experience I had gained provided me with fresh perspective and ability to appreciate aspects of the stories that were previously hidden from me.
What a great thing to do, returning to old stories you read at a different stage of life! I agree that life experience significantly affects the way we interact with a text.
Thanks, Kate. Wuthering Heights and Rebecca are also two of my favourites. There are a number of books I feel I should re-read after probably watching too many film and TV adaptations.
This is such an interesting topic. I completely agree, when a book finds you can be just as important as the book itself. We all interpret books differently based on our experiences, and that can change as we get older. Thank you for sharing this insightful discussion!
I read Wuthering Heights last year, at 38, and could not understand why anyone liked it. I HATED it. 🤣 Same with the HP books, which I have used up a thesaurus on dictating how much I loathe them. And it's not from any religious perspective; I just think the writing is horrible. This might be, in part, because I read them as an adult, with no interest in joining the HP Fan Club. Interestingly enough, my 12YO is obsessed with HP.
As a teen, I adored To Kill a Mockingbird, but as an adult, I'm appalled. And her sequel did no favors to it, either. What I read as a celebration of racial equality as a teen I reread as an adult through the filter of acknowledged white privilege, and was left feeling icky.
I originally found Mansfield Park to be tedious, but it is now my favorite, along with Persuasion. Little Women will never not have layers. Anne of Green Gables, though the nature imagery bores me - I hate nature, on principle, so that's probably why 🤣 - is still worry reading every year. It's the last three that I have come, as a mother and 40ish adult, to appreciate the most.
I appreciate the Narnia books, but have read them so many times, and am thoroughly bored. I don't read them myself any more, but do enjoy them with my kids.
I do like WH, but it is definitely a strange novel! And also gets complicated by the amount of characters with similar/the same names. I've never read any of the HP books as they don't appeal to me, although my whole family are big fans. I did enjoy Mockingbird (though can see your points re white privilege) but never tried the sequel as heard bad reports of it and so decided to stick with the original. It's interesting that you disliked Mansfield Park but then enjoyed it on re-reading. Little Women will.always be a winner!😀
I'm struck particularly by what you say about Wuthering Heights, which I found far too toxic for my developing yet still immature mind when it came into my life as a set book for O'Level, tiddely-pom years ago. I believe we were led to think of it as a great romance, then, and I simply couldn't see it as that. (I have always had an aversion to explicit cruelty in novels, in any case.) I wonder whether the current GCSE curriculum offers a more guided reading experience. I hope so.
Thank you for your comment. Yes, I find it quite odd that it is often seen as a 'romance' novel. I'm not sure re GCSE; although both my kids have sat them, they didn't study WH. However, I would think that the discussions around the text would be more rigorous in these times.
I haven't kept in touch with the curriculum at all, because there's been no need for me to do that. When I was preparing my latest review, I was thinking about how YA readers encounter witchcraft and witch-trials now, and was really surprised to find that The Crucible had been dropped in 2014!
A great post and one that really made me think. I agree that Edna Pontellier’s abandoning her children is problematic on one level, at least. But I think a key function of fiction is to allow us to experience extremes, try them on for size if you like. And the freedom to just walk away - not just from family, but from one's community, even country - is something that humans arguably had for thousands of years and then lost in our modern, trammelled existence. So Chopin is perhaps doing us a favour of imagining that freedom for us, showing that it's possible to think that thought.
Rereading is fascinating. I agree that books we come back to later in life can be read very differently a second or third time. Some have argued that a sign of a great work is when it means something important to you at different stages of your life, each time something different. If that's the case, it suggests how much we bring to the party as readers.
Thank you for reading, Jeffrey. I agree, fiction allows us to experience other lives and choices that we otherwise would not have access to. Regarding re-reading and great works, again this is a good point. I don't know about others, but I tend to be selective in the re-reading I indulge in. It tends to fall into a couple of categories: if I want to write about it/the author, or research ideas and themes connected to it or if it just a book I loved the first time around and feel the pull to re-read at a certain point in my life. I know there are some readers who like to return to a specific book once a year or every couple of years, just to check in.
I've just finished Ian McEwan's new novel, which I thoroughly recommend, but it has a very interesting plot line about how a woman might choose to balance creativity and motherhood. No spoilers, but it's a really interesting viewpoint from a male novelist, I think
One was when you wrote “Another consideration, of course, is the time period of when the novel was written or when it is set.” My current novel, time period 1987, includes a trans character. I anticipate having to write an Author’s Note in the front matter explaining that this phenomenon was viewed and discussed very differently then from how we see it today.
The other concerns my attempt to re-read a novel I had loved as a teenager. After many years of honing my own writing craft, I was appalled at now tempting it was to fetch my red pencil and mark up the text because of how many times I felt the writing fell short of what it should have been. I couldn’t finish my re-read.
Thanks, Robin :) It is interesting what you say re the time period, and how different the 1980s views would have been to our current cultural landscape.
Lovely reflection, Kate. You’ve made me realize in discussing your rereading in relation to film versions that each reread is a type of adaptation - a topic very dear to me. I love the discourse around the idea of adaptation. Thanks for making us THINK on this Sunday and remember that going back to great texts (like Chopin) is certainly worth it.
Thanks, Kate, and I'm glad you found the idea of adaptation interesting. I re-watched film version of The Hours last night and see something new in it each time. This post came about partly from your comment a couple of weeks ago on my Awakening piece - so thanks for that! In writing this, I now want to re-read both Rebecca and WH...
I will shamelessly admit that I have not yet read the novels mentioned here, but several of the points you raised have tickled my mind and have reminded me that I should get to these classics sooner rather than later!
Timely topic for me as I invested a fairly considerable amount of time this past year rereading some stories I had not read for 20-30 years. I did a deep dive into several of Shakespeare's play that I had not read since high school and also watched movie adaptations of these. My experience this time around was significantly different. Certainly the additional life experience I had gained provided me with fresh perspective and ability to appreciate aspects of the stories that were previously hidden from me.
What a great thing to do, returning to old stories you read at a different stage of life! I agree that life experience significantly affects the way we interact with a text.
Thanks, Kate. Wuthering Heights and Rebecca are also two of my favourites. There are a number of books I feel I should re-read after probably watching too many film and TV adaptations.
This is such an interesting topic. I completely agree, when a book finds you can be just as important as the book itself. We all interpret books differently based on our experiences, and that can change as we get older. Thank you for sharing this insightful discussion!
Exactly! When and where we are in our lives is such an important factor in our reading. Thank you for commenting :)
I read Wuthering Heights last year, at 38, and could not understand why anyone liked it. I HATED it. 🤣 Same with the HP books, which I have used up a thesaurus on dictating how much I loathe them. And it's not from any religious perspective; I just think the writing is horrible. This might be, in part, because I read them as an adult, with no interest in joining the HP Fan Club. Interestingly enough, my 12YO is obsessed with HP.
As a teen, I adored To Kill a Mockingbird, but as an adult, I'm appalled. And her sequel did no favors to it, either. What I read as a celebration of racial equality as a teen I reread as an adult through the filter of acknowledged white privilege, and was left feeling icky.
I originally found Mansfield Park to be tedious, but it is now my favorite, along with Persuasion. Little Women will never not have layers. Anne of Green Gables, though the nature imagery bores me - I hate nature, on principle, so that's probably why 🤣 - is still worry reading every year. It's the last three that I have come, as a mother and 40ish adult, to appreciate the most.
I appreciate the Narnia books, but have read them so many times, and am thoroughly bored. I don't read them myself any more, but do enjoy them with my kids.
I do like WH, but it is definitely a strange novel! And also gets complicated by the amount of characters with similar/the same names. I've never read any of the HP books as they don't appeal to me, although my whole family are big fans. I did enjoy Mockingbird (though can see your points re white privilege) but never tried the sequel as heard bad reports of it and so decided to stick with the original. It's interesting that you disliked Mansfield Park but then enjoyed it on re-reading. Little Women will.always be a winner!😀
📚
I'm struck particularly by what you say about Wuthering Heights, which I found far too toxic for my developing yet still immature mind when it came into my life as a set book for O'Level, tiddely-pom years ago. I believe we were led to think of it as a great romance, then, and I simply couldn't see it as that. (I have always had an aversion to explicit cruelty in novels, in any case.) I wonder whether the current GCSE curriculum offers a more guided reading experience. I hope so.
Thank you for your comment. Yes, I find it quite odd that it is often seen as a 'romance' novel. I'm not sure re GCSE; although both my kids have sat them, they didn't study WH. However, I would think that the discussions around the text would be more rigorous in these times.
I haven't kept in touch with the curriculum at all, because there's been no need for me to do that. When I was preparing my latest review, I was thinking about how YA readers encounter witchcraft and witch-trials now, and was really surprised to find that The Crucible had been dropped in 2014!
A great post and one that really made me think. I agree that Edna Pontellier’s abandoning her children is problematic on one level, at least. But I think a key function of fiction is to allow us to experience extremes, try them on for size if you like. And the freedom to just walk away - not just from family, but from one's community, even country - is something that humans arguably had for thousands of years and then lost in our modern, trammelled existence. So Chopin is perhaps doing us a favour of imagining that freedom for us, showing that it's possible to think that thought.
Rereading is fascinating. I agree that books we come back to later in life can be read very differently a second or third time. Some have argued that a sign of a great work is when it means something important to you at different stages of your life, each time something different. If that's the case, it suggests how much we bring to the party as readers.
Thank you for reading, Jeffrey. I agree, fiction allows us to experience other lives and choices that we otherwise would not have access to. Regarding re-reading and great works, again this is a good point. I don't know about others, but I tend to be selective in the re-reading I indulge in. It tends to fall into a couple of categories: if I want to write about it/the author, or research ideas and themes connected to it or if it just a book I loved the first time around and feel the pull to re-read at a certain point in my life. I know there are some readers who like to return to a specific book once a year or every couple of years, just to check in.
I've just finished Ian McEwan's new novel, which I thoroughly recommend, but it has a very interesting plot line about how a woman might choose to balance creativity and motherhood. No spoilers, but it's a really interesting viewpoint from a male novelist, I think
Thanks, Sarah, that sounds like something I ought to read!
Great read; thanks! Two thoughts occur to me.
One was when you wrote “Another consideration, of course, is the time period of when the novel was written or when it is set.” My current novel, time period 1987, includes a trans character. I anticipate having to write an Author’s Note in the front matter explaining that this phenomenon was viewed and discussed very differently then from how we see it today.
The other concerns my attempt to re-read a novel I had loved as a teenager. After many years of honing my own writing craft, I was appalled at now tempting it was to fetch my red pencil and mark up the text because of how many times I felt the writing fell short of what it should have been. I couldn’t finish my re-read.
Thanks, Robin :) It is interesting what you say re the time period, and how different the 1980s views would have been to our current cultural landscape.
Lovely reflection, Kate. You’ve made me realize in discussing your rereading in relation to film versions that each reread is a type of adaptation - a topic very dear to me. I love the discourse around the idea of adaptation. Thanks for making us THINK on this Sunday and remember that going back to great texts (like Chopin) is certainly worth it.
Thanks, Kate, and I'm glad you found the idea of adaptation interesting. I re-watched film version of The Hours last night and see something new in it each time. This post came about partly from your comment a couple of weeks ago on my Awakening piece - so thanks for that! In writing this, I now want to re-read both Rebecca and WH...
I will shamelessly admit that I have not yet read the novels mentioned here, but several of the points you raised have tickled my mind and have reminded me that I should get to these classics sooner rather than later!