(no subject)

[arethinn]

http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=2965

This has definitely happened to me. Like, one time I re-read Bridge to Terabithia and I suppose it wasn't exactly "BAD AND NOT GOOD TO READ??" but it certainly wasn't like I remembered it being. I shudder to think how I would feel about the Ramona Quimby books or Baby-Sitters Club series if I were to read them now; both better left to the rosy glow of nostalgia, I think. On the other hand, Shel Silverstein is a delight every time (although poetry is a different beast, I suppose). I'm trying to think of what else I read as a kid that would be likely to fall into this category, but actually I think I transitioned to more "adult" stuff pretty early on - I was turned on to science fiction by picking up 2010: Odyssey Two when I was 11, for example (and I didn't know at the time it was a sequel and BOY was I confused, but apparently I liked it anyway because here we are).

Anyway - you? I'm sure most of the people reading this are quite old enough to have had the same experience. What's held up, what's turned to ashes?

Comments

[caraven]

Ahem, um, so, I was a white hot lit nerd in high school and read Paradise Lost and liked it? But every time I've read Milton since then? I hate him and his stuff more and more.

That said, I remember reading Judy Blume and Encyclopedia Brown stories when I was young, and I've not returned to them. But I know how little I have in common with all of them now. Hell, I remember old Star Trek TOS novels that I was SO INTO and...I just can't even ponder reading them again.

[digitalsidhe]

I re-read Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising sequence some years back. It held up okay, although my view of the world has gotten considerably more complex and less dualistic since I was, what, 12 years old or so?

It's aimed at a roughly 10-14-year-old audience. (Think like the first 2-3 books of Harry Potter, definitely nothing post-Prisoner of Azkaban.) Given that, it does have a good amount of depth and complexity.

I still liked it. I've outgrown it a little, in places, but there's still much I can enjoy.

[arethinn]

SS to PoA hold up pretty well for me, but then, not only did I turn into A Fan but I first encountered Harry Potter when I was already an adult (age 23), so that probably changes things substantially.

[bloodstone_angel]

When I was in my tweens I was a huge Anne Rice fan. (I've read an embarrassing number of her books.) As I got older (and she got older), I began to do a lot more eyerolling and wishing that at some point an editor had stepped in and reigned in her flowery rambling impulses. The last one I read was Blood Canticle (2003) and then I was done. I haven't even been tempted by anything she's published since then.

One thing that has aged well for me is Garth Nix's Abhorsen trilogy. That one actually gets scarier to me as I get older.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Don't know about the Baby-Sitters Club books, but you might be surprised by Beezus, Ramona and their friends: Beverly Cleary was writing for kids, of course, but the quality of her writing stands the test of time.

My first adult SF was Asimov's I, Robot, which I read when I was 8 - the same age as the little girl in the first story. Lost In Space was new on TV, and I loved the robot, so I'd gone to the library looking for books about robots, and that was what I found.

Childrens' books (i.e. books intended for children) that I loved as a child and still love now include:

The Borrowers series by Mary Norton
The Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander
The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling
Caddie Woodlawn and Magical Melons by Carol Ryrie Brinks
The Enchanted Castle and Five Children and It by Edith Nesbit
My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
The Merrie Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle
The Secret Garden and A Little Princess by Francis Hodgson Burnett
The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald
The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss

I didn't read either the Winnie the Pooh books or The Wind In The Willows as a child, because I thought they sounded twee, but I read them and loved them after I was grown.