Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl
I’m going to tweak this prompt slightly so I can give more general answers to it as I have a long history of rereading books I loved X years ago only to discover that they no longer suit my tastes for a wide variety of reasons.
This means that if I’ve felt the urge to reread something, I’ve probably already done it.
Change is part of being human, and I don’t think it’s always reasonable to expect someone to feel the same way about a book 5, 10, or 50 years later.
Some people will always love certain books, of course, and that’s perfectly okay, too. But I believe that some books may work best if read at certain stages of life or under a specific range of personal circumstances for some of us.
This will be a short list this week.
1. The Classics
I’ve had some disappointing experiences rereading some of my favourite childhood classic novels only to discover things in them that I’d either forgotten or had not fully understood the first time I read them. This makes me not want to read reread anything else from this genre I have fond memories of.
See also: the weird and offensive things The Secret Garden had to say about how people should overcome their health problems. While I agree that spending time out in nature and trying to look on the bright side of life can be great coping mechanisms, they are not magical cures for anyone’s disabilities or illnesses.
2. Long Books
I used to see books that were 400+ pages long and relish the thought of diving into them. Now I strongly prefer works half that length at most unless the storyline is otherwise irresistible to me.
See also: The Pillars of the Earth series by Ken Follett. I remember loving how detailed the plot was about the lives of ordinary people who built those amazing cathedrals in Europe…but it’s also almost 1000 pages long which is far too verbose for me these days.
3. Unsatisfying Endings
It’s disappointing to follow a series for years only to be let down by how it ends.
See also: The Clan of the Cave Bear series by Jean M. Auel. The first few books in it were wonderful, and then most of the conflicts that had been slowly building up tension in this series were either completely ignored or hand-waved away with tepid solutions in the final two books.
While I’ll always have a soft spot for these characters, I cannot convince myself to read those last two books again.
4. (Overly) Hyped Books
Obviously, not all books that are wildly popular upon their release are going to have this issue, but I’ve noticed that quite a few books that are hyped up a lot do not match my expectations of what I want to read. Their characters might feel flat when you look closely, or their plot twists have an over abundance of foreshadowing, or the issues they discuss are no longer so relevant a few years later.
I will not be providing an example of this one as I don’t want to make anyone feel bad for enjoying the hype surrounding hot, new books or having different preferences for character or plot development than I do. Reading tastes are such personal things.
It has simply been my experience that there is often – but certainly not always – an inverse correlation between how much a new book is hyped up and how much I will personally enjoy it. So I will leave those heavily advertised books for other readers to enjoy and go browse in quieter sections of the reading community.
5. Fairy Tales
It pains me to admit this, but I have not enjoyed the majority of the fairy tales or fairy tale retellings I’ve read in the last five years. The genre doesn’t feel fresh to me anymore.
Hopefully this will change someday as I loved this sort of thing when I was a kid.
Once again, no examples are needed here.
6. Amazing Plot Twists
Some stories work fabulously the first time around because you (probably) won’t see their plot twists coming in advance.
Once you know what those plot twists were, it can be hard to find the motivation to reread these tales even though I may have really enjoyed them the first time around.
See Also: Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit (Ishmael, #1) by Daniel Quinn, but I will not be giving any hints about what the twist was!