Earlier this week, I posted about my unfortunate first experience reading Wuthering Heights. I didn’t like it much on first read because I was expecting a love story, but I did find it interesting. It wasn’t until I read it a second time that I could enjoy it. That got me thinking about revisiting literary nemeses.
There are lots of books that have grown on me on repeated readings. I wrote earlier this year about Persuasion, as one example of a book that I thought was only pretty good on first read and grew to love later. But most of the books that fall into this category are ones that I liked at least a little the first time. Why, after all, would I go back and read something again if I didn’t like it?
Well, there are some books that I tried when I was too young for them. Jane Eyre went over my head when I tried reading it at age 12. I think I gave up before the halfway point. But I knew at the time that the problem wasn’t the story, but the language and the length. I picked it up again in high school and loved it.
Then there are that books that, as an English major, I was required to read more than once. Wuthering Heights is one example. Another is Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I read it as a senior in high school and did not like it at all. The long sentences, the plot in which not much seemed to happen, the lack of a single likable character. There was nothing about it that I appreciated or enjoyed. It was a slog, pure and simple. However, when I had to read it as a senior in college, I liked it much more, even though it’s still not a favorite. (I prefer Conrad’s The Secret Agent.)
There are other books that were simply the wrong place to start with a new-to-me author. The Nice Tailors was the first Dorothy Sayers book I tried to read, and I gave up quickly. All that technical talk about bell-ringing! Soooo not my thing. But then after reading most of Sayers’s other mysteries and falling in love with Lord Peter, I found that when Lord Peter is involved, technical talk about bell ringing is indeed my thing.
So I wonder if there are other books I disliked when I read them but that I’d enjoy now. So many people whose taste is similar to mine love Mrs. Dalloway, but in college I found it tedious and pointless. Now that I’m older, would I see the point of it? Alias Grace is a favorite for many Margaret Atwood lovers, but the last half bored and frustrated me. I hadn’t read much Atwood when I read Alias Grace. Would I like it more now that I’m more used to her writing? It’s hard to say, and I’m not making it a priority to revisit either of these books when there are so many great books out there that I’ve never attempted to read at all, but I do wonder.
How about you? Have you ever gone back to a book you didn’t like and find that you liked it? Do you have any literary nemeses that you’re considering revisiting someday?
Notes from a Reading Life (October 24-November 8)
Books Completed
- Armadale by Wilkie Collins (review to come November 13)
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (audio, reread)
- Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt
Currently Reading
- How to Buy a Love of Reading by Tanya Egan Gibson.
- Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (audio).
- Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (reread).
- The Ode Less Traveled by Stephen Fry. Lessons in writing poetry. I’ve reached the chapter on ballads.
On Deck
- The Regency by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles.
- The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne.
New Acquisitions
- Out of a Clear Sky by Sally Hinchcliffe. Via Bookmooch.
- Sea of Poppies by Amitov Ghosh. Via LT Early Reviewers.
- North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. For Classics Circuit Gaskell tour in December.
- The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Dubois. For Classic Circuit Harlem Renaissance tour in February.
Books to Remember
- Pilo Family Circus by Will Elliott. Reviewed at Save Ophelia.
- Stoner by John Williams. Reviewed at Asylum.
- Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist. Reviewed at Gaskella.
- Come Closer by Sara Gran. Reviewed at Things Mean a Lot.
- The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins. Reviewed at A Work in Progress.
The summer of 1984 was a hot, dry summer in England. I know, because I was there. My family lived in England for a year, between June of 1984 and August of 1985, and I remember the headlines: Heat Wave Burns Britain! Drought Scorches Crops!
Nikola Tesla was an inventor and engineer known for his work with alternating current, magnetic fields, and radio. His accomplishments were extraordinary, but before reading The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt all I knew about him was that he was a scientist who discovered some amazing stuff (although I couldn’t have said what). Hunt makes Tesla a character in this, her second novel, and readers are treated to an exploration of both Tesla’s discoveries and his eccentricities.
This is not a love story! That’s the first thing any potential first-times reader of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë must understand, lest they be as disappointed as I was when I first read this book as part of my English class my senior year of high school. I was expecting an epic romance that would tear my heart to pieces as I worried over the fate of two great lovers. What I got was a story of people doing a lot of wicked things in the name of love, but rarely doing anything actually loving. I was horrified! I couldn’t believe this book had been called a great romance. But I was also fascinated. I didn’t like any of the characters in the book much, but I couldn’t look away from them. And the more I thought about them, the more interesting they became. However, it wasn’t until my second time reading Wuthering Heights, this time for a college class, that I came to truly enjoy the book. This third reading continued the pleasure.
Today is the big day!
Sometimes a poor interview can ruin a perfectly good book. I heard animal science expert Temple Grandin interviewed on NPR several years ago. The interviewer focused almost entirely on Grandin’s personal experience as an autistic person and her observations of animals. I was left with the definite impression that Grandin had come up with an oddball theory—that animals’ brains work like autistic people’s brains—and was now making a killing by selling a book (Animals in Translation) promulgating that theory and that people were buying it because it sounded right, not because there was any research to support. I dismissed Grandin’s ideas as pure pop science.
One of the best books I’ve read this year is Love in the Time of Cholera. It swept me away in the most wonderful way. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende reminded me of that marvelous book, but it never quite stirred my soul.