I didn’t have to read it for school, but I recently reread The Compleat Enchanter by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, and was struck by how misogynistic and simplistic it was. What was I thinking as a teenager to find it so funny?
Yes definitely "Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier looks completely different now to what it did to me aged 16. Maxim de Winter was a romantic hero then but now a murderer.
I re-read "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Jane Eyre" once a year, every year. My sympathy for Boo has grown over time (although I felt sorry for him as a youngling too). When I first read Jane, I thought "Every man except Mr Rochester issome form of dick". Now they're *all* dicks. Lesson learned!
First read Moby Dick at 15 in AP English class: Over my head, a long, dull story about a big fish. Again at 25: tapped into my own "watery world of woe." At 35: There is some dark humor here. At 45: Sent me into rabbit holes about ambergris. At 55: Life is hard. Wondering what 65 will bring.
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Maybe amazing isn't the right word. Frightening. Terrifying.
Hits different now.
I find myself enduring jags of sudden, uncontrollable weeping.