Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

Since we have members of all ages in this group, I'm curious as to opinions about the ideal stage of life when you recommend reading classic works of literature.

Of course, one of the joys of reading is stepping into perspectives not our own. But a certain work may resonate more during a particular stage of life. Some storylines might be better appreciated later in life, and some will appeal more in youth.

For example:
A Modest Proposal - Teens
The irreverence of the satire suits the teenage years, and it may revise their opinion of classics to realize that a work 300 years old could have such shocking content.

What say you all? What are the best books for your 20s, 30s, 50s, 80s? Are there books that you have reevaluated after rereading them later in life? Being only in my 30s myself, I'm particularly interested in the input from our older members.

Interesting tread. I read The Name of the Rose when I was just 14 years. I liked it a lot, but I want to re-read it some day. I expect that there was a lot of philosophical discussion I did not understand at the time.

I started reading Sherlock Holmes when I was 14 and that was perfect. Somehow it seems that a lot of books fascinated me more back then. I read Jules Verne Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island at least twice, and they where awesome. Later (age 35++) I read some of he's lesser know works. Michael Strogoff and Mathias Sandorf and rated them both 2 stars – I did not even like the writing style. I suspect that it is me, who has changed.

I was also very moved by The Invisible Man (5-star) at that time. I later re-read, I did not see it as quite so fantastic. Maybe we are more movable at an earlier age or the bar for “extraordinary good” is way lower?

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is also a good for teens 15+ (you need to have heard about quantum physics).

I wasn't very old when I read Brave New World (17 years or so) and it had me thinking about individual versus family and versus society. I would also recommend The Dispossessed around that age for the same reason.

I am currently reading Ulysses. Do not attempt this book too early! Having read a lot of the major (and minor) classics is important to understand some of the puns.

Also War and Peace would be a book, I would say requires some life experience to understand. The power struggle of sitting on a too big horse.

Some books speaks on different levels and can be read aloud for smaller children and there will be some for both a child and the adult.
The Little Prince
A Christmas Carol
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Gulliver's Travels (for children mostly the first part)
any adventure by Hans Christian Andersen

I read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury in my late teens, before the internet, cell phones, etc. and didn't get a lot out of it.
I reread it this year, many years later, and loved it. I really appreciated his writing style and his ideas are scarily accurate at times.
I think coming-of-age stories are good choices for younger readers(under 30) as well as for older readers too.

I read many Dickens[ [book:A Tale of Two Cities|1953] / David Copperfield / Oliver Twist/ The Pickwick Papers ]when I was around 14-15...and so did Crime and Punishment and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde..I think I must have missed many nuances in it then..and maybe able to appreciate it mire now..

Not sure I want to read it all once again though...

As a teen I read pretty much what was assigned-Shakespeare, etc. My favorite was Jane Eyre. As I get older I am trying to read more of those I missed. It's why I joined here. I think I appreciate more than I would have as a youth. For example, I had never read Dracula, Frankenstein, 1984, Animal Farm and many others, but I really enjoyed them in the past year. I am 54 if that helps any.

I started reading before I started school. I was taught by an older sister. I always read at least three grades above my assigned level, because I would borrow her books and read them before she had to turn them back to the school or library. As a result, I got more of Shakespeare, Milton, the classics in general than most of my peers.

I have reread most of the classics at different stages in life and I believe we bring something different to the experience and therefore we take something different away. I can't tell you what it will be like at 80 yet, but the mid-60s finds me still loving both the classics I re-read and most of the books that were at the heart of my love for reading...like Mary Stewart's novels.

It seems to me that the key is to instill a love of reading in a child at as early an age as possible and then let them read anything they want to read. I'm sure I didn't understand a lot of the deeper issues in The Mill on the Floss when I was twelve, but I recognized a great story, built a good vocabulary, and came to it richer the second time around.

You ae right Sarah...coming back to a book at 30s will be different than what it was at 15ish.Still too many books left yet...

At age 59, I bring so much more to every book that I read, so it is a pleasure to re-read classics that I first encountered and enjoyed as a young person.

Sara wrote: "I started reading before I started school. I was taught by an older sister. I always read at least three grades above my assigned level, because I would borrow her books and read them before she ha..."

Similar. My grandfather taught me to read at age 3 (at my insistence). I started reading adult novels by age 7 (the first was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea). I mixed adult literature, children's literature, and comic books from that point on.

I always regarded my early reading as my greatest boon in life, Patrick. I also mixed adult and children's lit, although I find now that there are a lot of well-known children's books that I never read at all. My mother encouraged us to read as much as possible, but she seldom read TO us. She had seven kids and a lot to do, I can imagine she was too tired to want to read to anyone at nightfall.

I'd always thought that Catcher in the Rye had more of a Teen appeal but the comments in the group read thread haven't really supported that so far.


I know I got a lot more out of Moby Dick last year than I ever did in my teens.

There was a Mark Twain book that I read as a kid that I thought was absolutely boring and pointless. It wasn't. It's just that all the best jokes were going way over my head.

Anyway, some childhood books that I reread, I end up thinking "Oh! I get it now!" and then others, it's more of a "Oh, god, what was I thinking? I thought this was good?!"

There are some books I am almost afraid to reread since I loved them so much the first time I read them in my early 20s, forty years ago.
One of them is Dune, which I will read with the Buddy Read in this group. The other is Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, which "everybody"was reading.
I read The Lord of the Rings then as well and have reread them more than once since then.
I know that I got a lot more out of the classics I read for pleasure later on after reading them for English class. I liked the reading part, but wasn't too fond of some of the questions we had to answer.
I went on to study German and French literature in university and had the same experience. Even though I enjoyed the books, there was so much pressure with deadlines that I didn't have time to appreciate them properly.

Rosemarie wrote: "One of them is Dune, which I will read with the Buddy Read in this group"

Why not nominate it in re-read? I would join that one. I read it about 27 years ago.

Anyway, some childhood books that I reread, I end up thinking "Oh! I get it now!" and then others, it's more of a "Oh, god, what was I thinking? I thought this was good?!"

Yes Melanti! More of the "Oh I get it now" for me.

J_BlueFlower wrote: "Interesting tread. I read The Name of the Rose when I was just 14 years. I liked it a lot, but I want to re-read it some day. I expect that there was a lot of philosophical discussion..."

I agree that with some books, rereading them later in life allows you to glean new meaning that you weren't able to the first time around. I haven't read War and Peace, but it seemed to me as a sprawling epic that it might be appreciated later in life. And others you read too late - when I read Pippi Longstocking I didn't so much laugh at her whimsical antics, as get angry that she was being wasteful and making a mess.

Thanks for the advice on Ulysses. Now I don't have to feel quite so bad for putting it on the back-burner. Can you think of any other works that are highly influenced by previous classics?

I agree with The Little Prince and A Christmas Carol fall under that category of book that can be appreciated throughout life. I love those fable-like stories.

Rosemarie wrote: "I read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury in my late teens, before the internet, cell phones, etc. and didn't get a lot out of it.
I reread it this year, many years later, and loved it. I really apprec..."

That's an excellent point! I didn't think about how reading science fiction would obviously be affected by advances in technology. I know when I read Foundation I had to keep reminding myself that fingerprint sensors or pocket recorders were unheard of technologies. Hyperspace travel being written about before we had even made it into orbit. It'll be interesting to see what aspects of current sci-fi will seem trite and commonplace in the future.

Melanti wrote: "I'd always thought that Catcher in the Rye had more of a Teen appeal but the comments in the group read thread haven't really supported that so far. "

Those childhood reads seem to go one way or the other - much better or much worse. I'm thinking that I need to re-read some Mark Twain now. :)

When I read Catcher in the Rye, I didn't think it appealed much, and wasn't sure why it was touted as the classic novel for teens. I vastly preferred Nine Stories when I was in high school.

Melissa wrote: "... I know when I read Foundation I had to keep reminding myself that fingerprint sensors.."

Reminds me of Doomsday Book (Hugo Award for Best Novel (1993), Nebula Award for Best Novel (1992)): The amount of time and attention they spend on sitting and waiting for phone calls and talking to other people about watching over their phone, because they expect an important call.

This is a great question, and good food for thought.

Off the top of my head, I'm glad I read Little Women when I was a young girl. I don't think I would have enjoyed it nearly as much if I'd waited to read it. I also think magical books like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Once and Future King were perfect for long, dreamy childhood days. And for some reason, reading To the Lighthouse at about 20 seemed perfect for me.

I don't know what to say about the many years since though. Except I do like reading stories about old people much more than I used to. :-)

For me it was 1984 by George Orwell. I first read the book in ninth grade and I absolutely hated it and didn't understand a lick of it. I had to get the cliffnotes to help me prepare for the test we had and somehow I got an A!

Fast forward many years later, I just recently read it again and was completely blown away. Five stars!

So far I am really liking The Sword in the Stone and hope to like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
But I do think I would have liked Little Women when I was a child.I find it hard to like..it was a hard to finish read from me...

siriusedward wrote: "So far I am really liking The Sword in the Stone and hope to like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
But I do think I would have liked Little Women when ..."

I am SO glad you're enjoying The Sword in the Stone! I will always love reading that one. But the other two, though I adored them once, I kind of cringe when I open them now so close them quickly and leave them in my past. :-)

It would be hard to express how much impact Little Women had on me as a girl. I am so happy I did not come to it as an adult. I think most of the charm and all of the influence would have been lost.

Sara wrote: "It would be hard to express how much impact Little Women had on me as a girl. I am so happy I did not come to it as an adult. I think most of the charm and all of the influence would have been lost."
I agree with you Sara. Read Little Women over and over as a girl but when I reread it in my 60's it just seemed so-so. I still rated it a 5 star book because of the impact when I was young.

I can't imagine any young girl who wouldn't be smitten with Jo and I'm betting Louisa May Alcott inspired more young women to want to be writers than any other author.

Sara wrote: "I can't imagine any young girl who wouldn't be smitten with Jo and I'm betting Louisa May Alcott inspired more young women to want to be writers than any other author."

I bet that is true.

siriusedward wrote: "So far I am really liking The Sword in the Stone and hope to like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe."

Ah, two of my favorites :)

Kathleen & Elena, I'm so glad you are fans of Sword in the Stone too! But I would say that The Once and Future King as a whole goes on to become way too heavy for a child, more in the topics it covers and philosophical positions it takes on than as regards writing style. It won't do to underestimate children, though...

I personally believe that really great children's books (like, say, The Wind in the Willows) work at any age - if you're a kid they resonate with you, if you're older they evoke your childhood even if you hadn't read them as a child.

Perhaps the one genre I found I grew out of is adventure - whether in the traditional form or in the space opera/sword-and-sorcery disguise. An adult me requires something better than just an action-filled plot.

I absolutely loved Elidor by Alan Garner as a child. I found some of the scenes terrifying yet thrilling. With trepidation, I reread it a couple of years ago, terrified this time that it wouldn't feel scary to a 'grown-up'. But it was just as atmospheric and spine tingling decades later! Elidor is a lot more than just 'thrilling', but that was the bit that had really stayed with me.

I wonder if young people have overriding memories of atmospheres in books. I studied Great Expectations at school. I was only 11 and thought the novel was incredibly dull. But now, when someone mentions the name, I can almost feel the fog curling up from the Kent marshes. So, even though I was too young to appreciate the characterisation or the plot, something must have sunk in...

I think certain YA books really need to be read at a youngish age. What might be moving or striking or deeply interesting to a 12 or 13 year old who doesn't yet have a lot of life experience may seem "thin" to an adult reader. For example, The Borrowers or Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. Those are great books, but if you come at them first as an adult, you're likely to want more substance than is there. And I can recall a few YA books I've read recently that I thought had a terrific idea or premise but I really wished the author had written the same novel for adults, because I wanted a deeper, more thorough exploration of themes and more complexity in the characters.

Of course as we all know there are YA books that work at any age. I'm not talking here about an adult enjoying re-reading a favorite book from their childhood; in that case the pleasure comes as much from the nostalgia as from the book itself. I'm talking about YA books that appeal to first-time readers of all ages. Such books are, by and large, ones that do deal with complex issues and themes. So they satisfy the adult reader's need for depth while still being accessible to younger readers. It's a difficult line to walk.

Loretta wrote: "For me it was 1984 by George Orwell. I first read the book in ninth grade and I absolutely hated it and didn't understand a lick of it. I had to get the cliffnotes to help..."

Loretta, I agree -- 1984 probably isn't that accessible to kids. I think it would be hard for kids to comprehend how awful such a society would be. As adults, we can better grasp the existential threat posed by a government with total control, as well as appreciate the fearful plausibility of it.

I asked a friend of mine of a similar, rather elderly, age if he had read Tender Is the Night and he said he loved it when he read it in college. I recently finished it and didn't really care for it. The characters seemed too self-centered. Maybe that goes over better when you're starting your adult life.

Vicki wrote: "I asked a friend of mine of a similar, rather elderly, age if he had read Tender Is the Night and he said he loved it when he read it in college. I recently finished it and didn't real..."

That's interesting, Vicki, I had the same experience with Tender Is the Night. I read it as a college grad and adored it, then tried it again about twenty years later and I didn't find the same magic. However I found The Great Gatsby richer and more moving when I revisited it, so maybe the characters have a lot to do with it.

Michele wrote: "I think certain YA books really need to be read at a youngish age. What might be moving or striking or deeply interesting to a 12 or 13 year old who doesn't yet have a lot of life experience may se..."

Yes, I think you're right - nostalgia is definitely a big reason why I reread. I'm searching for a certain mood and time as well as a good plot when I pick up an old favourite. It's a lot to ask of a book...!

Melissa wrote: "What say you all? What are the best books for your 20s, 30s, 50s, 80s? Are there books that you have reevaluated after rereading them later in life? Being only in my 30s myself, I'm particularly interested in the input from our older members."

This is such an interesting question because I'm not sure if it can be answered, at least not in any objective way.

Like, there are obvious examples of books that I think really can only be (properly?) appreciated when the reader is an adult.

The first time I'd read any part of In Search of Lost Time was after I'd turned 21, because one of my favorite authors at the time had said in any interview there was no point in trying to read it before one is an adult, and turning 21 meant that I was now "an adult" (such was my logic at the time...). I only read the first two volumes that time, and I didn't really understand what all the fuss was about. It was well written, sure, but come on, what's the big deal about a goodnight kiss?

Well, then I tried to read it again about 10 years later. And I not only understood what the big deal was about that goodnight kiss, but I also began to comprehend what the big deal was about In Search of Lost Time in general. Not only did I finish the sequence the second time around, but I also began to understand just how ridiculous my thinking had been when I was younger.

So for me that's definitely an example of a book that's best read at, or at least after, a certain point in one's life.

I've reread a few childhood favorites with my son and found them sorely lacking. The example I usually use when discussing this phenomenon is Little House on the Prairie. I adored this series as a child but found it far too preachy as an adult (my son loved it, though). Pippi Longstocking is another good example, for similar reasons as Melissa.

The children's book that really irritated me, however, was The Story of Babar. I never read it as a child but I knew of Babar the Elephant. I'm sorry I ever read it to my son. It was thinly disguised colonialism at it's worst, and major life changes (like the death of the main character's mother on page 2) is brushed aside as irrelevant. Horrid series. I can't imagine why it's still touted as good children's literature.

Melissa wrote: "Since we have members of all ages in this group, I'm curious as to opinions about the ideal stage of life when you recommend reading classic works of literature.

Of course, one of the joys of rea..."

I don't think there are specific classic works of literature to be read at an age or another.
I think that a book is read differently - in the case you reread it - at an age or another. A book can suits you when you're 15, but can also suits you 20 or 40 years later, because you see in it different things and you're touched by different things too.

I think that many of the books that I would classify as being the best of world literature benefit greatly, in understanding and enjoyment, when they're read by "grown-ups."
For example, the dilemma faced by the protagonists in many of the ancient Greek tragedies: where they had to choose between two course of action: one being bad, and the other being bad would have been completely lost on me (raised on Walt Disney) as a twenty- something. But I read the plays in my mid-thirties and a little real life experience had kicked some of the fantasy-land stuff to the back of the bus; and the idea that there may not always be happy endings rang very true.
Of course to be fair: maturity of mind comes to each one of us separately and uniquely and certainly at different times, too.

Thank you, Matt. - )

J_BlueFlower wrote: "Interesting tread. I read The Name of the Rose when I was just 14 years. I liked it a lot, but I want to re-read it some day. I expect that there was a lot of philosophical discussion..."

Interesting: I find Swift a most difficult author to read. I think I got around to his Travels in my 50's and still struggled with it. The fact that the book is regularly handed to high students astounds me. On the other hand for any English literature education to skip over Swift would be a tragedy. He is a great talent. I like A Tale of A Tub.

Melissa wrote: "J_BlueFlower wrote: "Interesting tread. I read The Name of the Rose when I was just 14 years. I liked it a lot, but I want to re-read it some day. I expect that there was a lot of phi..."
IMHO, Ulysses is accessible without any background reading at all. It is an adult book in the sense that it is love story about a 16 year marriage that has lost or misplaced some of that love. Knowing the stories in Hamlet and The Odyssey can be useful, but are not in any way necessary for understanding. Ulysses was not intended to be a study; it was written to be fun!

For me the interesting thing about this idea of re-reading books from our past is that it seems to prove conclusively that it was never the books themselves that change but only us. Of course with rereading any book after a prolonged period of time it is very hard to predict what will happen. From my own experience three examples:
.
We were forced to read Ibsen's Hedda Gabler I think in 10th grade. I was 15 or 16 years old. I hated it; and remember nothing of the experience except disgusted dis-interest.
50 years later in a group here on goodreads I was enticed to read Gabler again. What a bomb! I loved it. It is to my mind now one of the most entertain reads of a life time!

I read Kurt Vonnegut's Cats Cradle way back when the author was hot stuff. Recently within the last few years I decided to try it again. It held up! It may not be profound, but it was a fun book to read back then and it is still a fun book today.

I finally got around to reading Moby Dick in my early thirties at the insistence of a very wise and valued friend. I loved it. No wonder it was so famous: such stylish writing and vivid melodrama. Recently, within the past year I was approached to read it again. I was aware, even before I started, that there might be a problem. My attitude toward violence to animals is much, much different than it was 35 years ago. So I started reading, and everything went fine for awhile: it really is elegantly written; but when I reached the point where they were going out and actually killing the whales I balked. I tried skipping chapters but it didn't work and I finally just gave up. I still respect the book as Art, but I can't enjoy reading it anymore.

Pillsonista wrote: So for me that's definitely an example of a book that's best read at, or at least after, a certain point in one's life.

I agree! I read In Search of Lost Time when I was 23 or 24, and pushed myself to finish it. Even before starting the book, I already knew I would have to re-read it when I will be around 40, which I'm already looking forward to.

I think you there certain books merit to be read twice: once for the experience and once to "get" it, because one has gained more life experience. For me, this seems true for philosophical novels, like Moby-Dick or, The Whale or The Man Without Qualities.

On the other hand, I would have loved to have read On the Road when I was younger and more impressed by hitchhiking. I felt more cynic towards the "adventures" because I now realise those can be very superficial.

Finally, there are works that benefit by being more familiar with the intertext or references to other works, such as Ulysses or The Sandman.