Since I finished Clockwork Orange I’ve been mulling a bit about age and books. Several people commented that they were blown away by Clockwork Orange when they read it as a teen. Then today in the comments at Necromancy Never Pays Jeanne commented that perhaps because she was older she liked the book under review better than two others who didn’t care for it as much. Does age matter when reading?
Not always, but sometimes it does. I think I would have felt differently about Clockwork Orange if I had read it as a teen. I didn’t read The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe until I was an adult and while I could see the charm for a kid, as an adult, I didn’t think it was all that. Same thing happened to me with Catcher in the Rye.
Conversely, when I was younger and read Moby Dick in high school English class I liked it but found it mostly really boring. Rereading it as an adult, the book turned out to be amazing. The first two times I read Jane Austen’s Emma I was in my twenties and I found her insufferable. When I read it last year I suddenly liked Emma and the book so much better.
Age matters but I don’t think it is age as a specific number, I think it is more age as experience — both reading experience and life experience. Does that make sense? I would like to think that age doesn’t matter when it comes to reading (and most of the time it doesn’t), the thought that there are some books out there that I haven’t read yet but might have missed the boat on makes me a bit sad. But then I can buoy myself up with the thought there are probably books I have not read yet that will be much more amazing when I do because of my age. Two sides of the same coin? Has your age ever made a difference when reading?
I think you nailed it when you said that it is more experience than it is the number of years a person has been alive. I’m finding that certain genres no longer appeal to me unless they are given a most definite literary style by their authors. Thrillers don’t thrill like they used to…I find myself saying “just get on with it” when the suspense level is about to peak. Horror doesn’t horrify me much anymore because I have seen too much of the real world to be horrified by zombies, vampires, and devils. And the trade-off has been a good one. My more serious reading is much more important, and more memorable, to me than the countless list of thrillers and horror novels that I now find difficult to remember at all…or to be able to differentiate one from the other.
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Sam, how interesting about certain genres holding less appeal. I’m the opposite with horror. When I was a kid I loved it, the scarier the better. Amityville Horror while babysitting alone at night when I was 14? Absolutely. Now just seeing the cover of that book scares me. So fascinating how it all changes!
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Ahahaha, whenever I don’t like a book Jeanne likes, she thinks it’s because she’s older. I am going to prove her wrong on SO MANY FRONTS a few years down the road. :p
That said, she’s right that age can make a difference to how you feel about books. (I just am not sure about the specific ones she says I would love better if I were older.) I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who loved the Chronicles of Narnia after reading them as adults, for instance. You aren’t alone!
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LOL, I reread the Chronicles of Narnia as an adult and still loved them… then again I had only read the first book as a child. When I read them all as an adult I still found them enjoyable to read, of course I discovered some books I liked better than others, and I think the age when I read them is partly due to that.
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Jenny, you and Jeanne are cracking me up. I look forward to finding out who proves who wrong 😀
A relief to hear about Narnia. When I first read it I was worried I was somehow deficient!
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I am in my mid-50s and I have to say that from my late 40s onward have been some of the most deeply satisfying reading years of my life. Many of the characters I deeply relate to I would never have understood when I was younger, but at the same time I can still enjoy a good coming of age story (having young adult children probably helps facilitate this). By the same token I am much more sophisticated in my reading, in terms of what I personally find readable or unreadable. Of course, as you know I have a very unique lived experience as a transgender person that shapes and informs my reading. But most important (I hope) is that as you get older you get freer to read AND like what you like without worrying about how you measure up to others (or whether the odd book gets pitched after 50 pages or so). Life is short. 🙂
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roughghosts, since I’m in my mid-40s that is a great thing to hear! You are right about feeling freer. It started gradually when I was in my late 30s and now I have become so good at giving up on books that aren’t working for me without a pang of guilt. And I don’t worry so much about measuring up to others though that still lingers; residue from being an English major 🙂
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I’m not so very much younger than Jeanne, so I’m not sure it was age either in that particular case. (I don’t have all the information to calculate it, but I suspect my age is near to the midpoint between Jeanne and Jenny’s.) And most of the people I’m seeing love that book are younger than me.
Then again, I loved Clockwork Orange when I listened to the audio a few years ago, but I attribute a lot of that to Nadsat sounding spectacular when read aloud. Or maybe I have immature taste 🙂 I still love catching up on kids’ books I missed when I was growing up, although they don’t cast quite the same spell as if I’d read them when I was younger.
I do think life experience and reading experience can make a difference in our relationship to a book, and those both come with age, so it can look like age is what’s making the difference. In the case of the book Jeanne was discussing today (A Little Life), I’ve had some recent life experience that really colored my reaction to the book. If I’d read it even a few months earlier, my negative reaction might have been less strong. (And if I were to have read it a year from now, when I’m less raw from recent experience, the same might be true.)
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Teresa, heh, finding the fly in the ointment you are! I suspect I would enjoy reading kids’ books I missed if I had kids of my own to read them with but not having that, I find rereading even books I loved as a kid a perilous things so I don’t for fear of “ruining” them. That said, there are still books I love like Dr. Seuss and Pooh. I don;t think Pooh will ever lose his charm for me.
Yes, life experience can be like that. There are certain things I don’t want to read about because they are too close to home, or as in your case, the timing of the book is affected by life events.
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I recently re-read 1984, It had been over ten years since I read it as a teen in English class. I remember not enjoying the ending when I was younger, but as an adult I was able to grasp more of the complexities and layers of the book and the ending wasn’t as horrible as I remember it was.
I am also re-reading the Anne of Green Gables series, and it’s been closer to twenty years since i’ve first read those stories. I still love the stories, and watching Anne grow up once more, but i’m also discovering that certain characters whom I had a distaste for as a child, I really appreciate and enjoy as an adult.
LOL, my friend has brought a lot of books I missed out on as a child to my attention and I do feel sad that i’ve missed out on some of these great stories, but I do hope to try and visit them eventually.
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njmckay, great example! I read 1984 as a teen and liked it but didn’t really understand the ending and all the layers. Rereading as an adult it chilled me to the bone. I’m afraid to reread books I loved as a kid for fear of “ruining” them so I think you are brave to reread Anne (I never read it).
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You don’t miss the boat if you are reading a book to find out what it is, not what it does to you.
My knowledge has increased a lot as I have gotten older. Once I had read almost no books; now I have read 3,000 or so. Big, big difference. Many books become available to my understanding that would once have been gibberish.
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Tom, a very good point. I am greedy though and want both what it does and what it is 🙂 Reading experience matters immensely in understanding, I completely agree. James Joyce when I was 16 made absolutely no sense to me, but a few years ago when I read Ulysses, I very much enjoyed it and I’m sure in 20 years it will be even better.
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Definitely you’re right that it’s experience, not age. I take Teresa’s point that recent experience can have a big effect, too. Most of all, though, I’m laughing out loud (with a deaf and dying cat in my lap) at Jenny’s prediction that she will prove me wrong a few years down the road. I’m looking forward to it.
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Jeanne, Jenny is very determined. As a spectator I am looking forward to it as well! But, yes, recent experience and even recent reading I think can have a big impact. It’s all so very fascinating.
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Yes, I think your correct about life experience. I believe that could give perspective perhaps missed at an earlier reading. A book just may not resonate at one period in our life and then does later- I think it’s a common occurrence that we see or understand things -even something we’ve experienced before-with new insights from different stages in our lives, as you illustrated with Moby Dick of instance.
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Girl in the World, yes! you put that so nicely 🙂
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Definitely I’ve noticed this effect- and not just in the passing of years/gaining experience but sometimes just the mood I’m in during a particular week! There are often books I loved as a child/teen that I’m almost afraid to reapproach, so many have failed me as an adult. Others stand up just fine to many re-reads. Similarly, I tend to stay away from YA books nowadays, I just get disappointed too often, just can’t get engaged. But there are a few that still delight me- they have to have a certain quality. I’m disappointed in quite a few that I wanted to like, but realize I should have read them much earlier when I was more impressionable (recent reading of Ring of Endless Light comes to mind). And there have been books that got so many great reviews, I knew I had to try them again so just set them aside when they didn’t work for me the first time. Like National Velvet- I tried that one twice as a teen, couldn’t get into it. Third time was great. One of my favorite books still.
Sorry that was so long.
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Jeane, oh yes, I am afraid to reread books I loved as a kid because I am worried my adult self will “ruin” my happy memories of them. Like you, I have a hard time with YA books as well. Some of them are really marvelous but generally I stay away from them. And don’t be sorry for your long comment! I liked it and I thank you for it! 🙂
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Same here, re. Emma. I first read it in a college English lit course, and I didn’t like her or even the book that much. But after the monumental BBC series of Pride and Prejudice, with the inimitable Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy, I became an Austen fan. And after that, have enjoyed all her six novels immensely… albeit I admit Emma is still my least liked one, together with Catherine Morland. Age of course matters since it affects our perceptions, understanding, and appreciation of the characters and the story. I’ve been mulling over age too, these few days, after I saw The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Will definitely vent my view one of these days in my review post. 😉
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Arti, I winder how many Austen fans Colin Firth created? 😉 I am looking forward to your further thoughts on age as well as the movie review.
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I completely agree with you…there are of course some books which defy age/religion/gender etc; but for many age and experience like you mentioned makes a difference. Like you I never saw the charm of Jane Eyre until I re-read her as an adult and could appreciate the kind of struggle she went through and the strength she demonstrated. On the other hand, reading Anne of Green Gables in my pre-teens made an indelible impact on me; my bestfriend/flatmate read it as an adult couple of years ago and like you said about the The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe, she liked the book and appreciated its worth but was hardly ga-ga like me; she had the same point that had she read Anne in her younger years, she would have reacted very differently!
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cirtnecce, oh yes, Jane Eyre is a good example. The first time I read it it was mostly a wild romance that I didn’t even like all that much, same with Wuthering Heights. But now it is a completely different book for me as is WH which is an astonishingly twisted story! It’s so fascinating how time and experience can change a book so much.
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I too have felt it. I have even gone a step higher after I realised this. It was two years back, that I made a list of read books to be re-read after some ten years, where I might’ve undergone much changes and would’ve had adeep understanding in my life. Maybe, I’ll be able to see, what I failed to see now. 😉
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rahul, oh what a great idea! I might have to try something like that 🙂
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😉
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Oh, goodness, yes! There are some books that I could only have enjoyed when I was younger and more innocent, there are others that I love nowadays mostly for reasons of nostalgia – to read with my children, and there are some that I did not get at all when I was younger and only began to appreciate in my ‘old age’. I also discover different things in the same book at different stages of my life, it’s almost like reading a new book each time.
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Great examples with Catcher In the Rye and Moby Dick. Readers do develop as they read more books although it perhaps becomes harder to be overwhelmed by a book. It is sad to realise that we have missed the boat with some books – I would agree that the Narnia books don’t really work if you try to read them as an adult. I wonder if the huge adult readership of the Harry Potter books was a (rather willed) attempt to recapture the experience of the childhood reading experience?
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Ian, thanks! Ah, yes, harder to be overwhelmed by a book but not impossible. It still happens to me now and then but not as often as it used to. There are different pleasures to be had now. I will say perhaps with the HP books. I did read them all and liked them very much. I did will myself through marathon weekend readings which was lots of fun and something I hadn’t done since I was a kid. But the stories themselves just turned out to be ripping good fun 🙂
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MarinaSofia, ah reading for nostalgia! I don’t have children but when friends or family members do I always love giving as gifts books I loved when I was a kid. I never read them but just holding a copy in my hand is a happy thing. I love how reading the same book at different stages of life is so much like reading a new book. 🙂
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One of the coolest thing about being a life-long reader is seeing how one’s tastes change as one ages. I love to look back over my book journal and see what I was reading ten or twelve years ago – for example, in my early-to-mid-twenties I was the queen of “chick-lit!” Now, not so much. 😉 Perhaps that’s why that romance I tried a few weeks ago didn’t work for me!
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Laila, you have a book journal going back to your childhood? So awesome! I didn’t start keeping track of my books until after college. Heh, yeah all that chick-lit might have affected your romance reading. Give it another 10-15 years and try again 🙂
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Whoops – no, I started the book journal in my early twenties! I do have diaries from my childhood, though. starting around age 12 – they’re a real trip! 🙂
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That’s still a good long time to have kept a list. Ah, childhood diaries. I began at eleven and still have have them. They are hilarious.
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One summer when I was a graduate student at Berkeley, I spent most of my time reading Laurence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet. I should have been studying psychology, preparing for my exams. But I wasn’t. Nor was a friend of mine, another graduate student who was not entirely content with psychology either. So together we read in sequence Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive and Clea and spent our summer afternoons talking about the Quartet
Each of the four novels describes the same events in Alexandria just before the start of World War II but from a different perspective, the perspective of the individual in the volume’s title. It is a multi-layered series that takes into account the history, politics, intrigues and philosophies of that time and place and the intersecting lives of four closely-knit individuals. The experience of reading about them, their relationships, and their exotic ideas, lives and loves was exhilarating.
Recently, I started to re-read the Quartet, beginning with Justine. But it wasn’t the same. The allure and mystery was gone. That puzzled me. But I am a different person now, with a long reading history and a long ago departure from psychology. Perhaps that was the difference. I can read all the literature I want to now, whereas in graduate school I could not. The Alexandria Quartet then was an escape, a flight to a wildly different world from psychology, an act of resistance to its demands and limitations.
So it isn’t simply a matter of age. With age comes changes, new interests and preferences, new circumstances, opportunities, and limitations. Still, there are other books I continue to enjoy after initially reading as a younger person. Some retain their pleasures, other don’t.
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Richard, what a wonderful story! No, it isn’t just age, age is a catch-all for all the life experiences that happen as the years fly by. Some books read when younger do retain their pleasures when reread later, the hard part is knowing which ones those will be. I’m always concerned about “ruining” my earlier happy memories with a fresher disappointment. But then there are some books I read long ago that would be completely different if I read them again, better, but in that case it is difficult to overcome the memories of not liking them so much. 🙂
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I love your post. It is true that age as in experience matters. However, I also find that some books from my childhood, recapture those moments in my childhood. Rereading Harry Potter still opens up that world for me. Personally, I still enjoy reading Young Adult novels.
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Katelyn, thanks! Yes, it is possible for some books to recapture childhood moments. I love the Pooh stories still. 🙂
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It’s good to read and re-read every book once in a while. I get a different, enriching interpretation, a different meaning in every reading 🙂
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Pol, most definitely!
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Yes and no. Experience ‘age’ rather than that number ‘age’ but we all know they tend to correspond. As I was reading this, my mind thought of Moby Dick – and then you mention it! I am sure that I would have abandoned it earlier in my lifetime but recently enjoyed the audio. And as for The Chronicles of Narnia? MY FAVORITES!! I have to erase my attempt to re-read these as an adult. It was NOT a good idea for me to do. I’m also positive that The Great Gatsby is a book that changes depending on your life experiences. but can be helped with a terrific/skilled discussion guide.
Great post – you always have such stimulating questions.
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See? I just thought of something else… I was an adult when I read Anne of Green Gables and I loved it. (have only read the one, though)
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Care, ah the mysteries of reading that Anne of Green Gables for the first time as an adult was marvelous but rereading Narnia was a bad idea. I must say I have read Great Gatsby three times hoping that each time I would finally like it and it has not happened. I do not plan on reading it a fourth time!
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I think so–I am sure there are books I am reading now that I would never have “got” before when I was younger and certainly would not have appreciated as much. I am sure it has to do with a wider world view and experience and hopefully a little knowledge along the way. And my tastes have refined, too. When I was younger I would not have been so apt to pick up a book written from a male character’s pov and would not have appreciated a heroine over the age of say 30! My how things change as we get older!
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Danielle, refined tastes are always a bonus! Knowing what you like is one of those wonderful things that comes with experience!
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Good post, Stephanie. I’ll chime in my own examples. For me the school text I just could not read was Great expectations. It took me a few goes and until my 40s before I suddenly saw the light. I’d fallen in love with with Dickens way before then but had a block about GE for a long time. Conversely, I adored Neville Shute in my teens and read every book. In my 40s I re read one and oh dear, how cliched it was. I’ll remember his books with huge fondness to the end of my days, but my tastes have moved on – and they’ve moved on because I read so many books of such variety in my teens – Austen whom I loved, Shute whom I loved, Dickens who had to grow on me, and so on.
I think it’s party to do with age and experience, but also to do with where you are in your life – what interests you at any given time. Age and experience have something to do with that, but not everything.
As for HP, I’m a bit like Ian I think. I really enjoyed the first one, and rather liked the second, but gave up half way through the third. I think this is partly because Iim not really a series reader.
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Thanks whisperinggums! I’ve heard that from other people about GE. Personally I loved it when I read it in school but I know many who did not. I read On the Beach when I was around 14 and it scared the pants off me and I never read Shute again. Perhaps it’s best I don’t try now?
“I think this is partly because I’m not really a series reader.” This made me splutter in my glass of water because I read “serious” instead of “series”! Oy, I almost choked! 🙂
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Your water splutter is a great compliment Stefanie, but I would have been sad if you’d choked. And yes, leave Shute. It was On the beach that I re-read. Good story but so stereotyped, with not enough nuanced writing to get over that, for me anyhow. But I gobbled him up throughout my teens.
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Well then I think I won’t try any other Shute books again and stick to my ever growing list of books you write about that sound so good!
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Some of the books I loved as a teen would be really underwhelming now, ten or twelve years later. I can’t imagine having the same visceral reaction to 1984, or Brave New World, or (especially) A Clockwork Orange. As an adult and parent, I had to put down The Road because it was taking to bad places, but I don’t think that would have been the case had I read it at 19.
Maybe it’s not the biological age as much as the collected life experience that changes the reading response.
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Sean, there are some times in life when we are more impressionable and those teen years are definitely among them. I have reread 1984 since and actually liked it even more. However, I think I will leave Brave New World to teenage me. I agree, it’s definitely more life experience than biological age, though the two tend to go together 🙂
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Yes! Oh yes!:D
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