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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Is there a right time to read...

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13:27 / 24.06.02

I have been wondering whether to post this topic for a while, as I have a feeling it might turn out a little inane, but wotthehell...

Does one's ability to appreciate certain books alter with age? Do you find that books you loved when you were a bit younger seem flat and dull now, or do you still go back to your old favourites? (I know I do)
... do you find yourself returning to books you didn't get on with when you were younger, or do they still not work for you? Are some books more appropriate at some points in life (or development)?

Will I find Middlemarch more congenial in my thirties than I do now?

16:50 / 24.06.02

Yes absolutely (not about Middlemarch). I have always found that some books that I cannot get into, will be finished in hours if I go back to them slightly later. I've had piles of partially read books sitting by my bed for years now and every so often I am able to pick up exactly the one I want.

Sometimes books I used to love are less good later in life but having just finished an English degree I actually find far more in them than I did when I was younger. Little things like narrative hooks, prefiguring, irony, homage, etc. which I have started looking for in anything I read (and watch, listen to, stare at etc.) stand out more. This could lead to an argument about wether the best ones of those are the ones you can't spot and just work on you with out you knowing but in general I already know what was coming so it is a chance to identify the way the book works). Of course, some of the stuff just plain sucks.

Things always do turn up at the right moment I've tended to find so if I can't get started on a book I don't tend to despair I just put it aside for a while and try to forget about it so it will just turn up at hand when it wants to be read. I also have a very good relationship with second hand bookshops and the right things tend to turn up in them just when I need. Which is nice.

18:09 / 24.06.02

Absolutely... there is no formula for it though. For instance, I read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when I was about 17...was completely unmoved, just had no idea what the fuss was about. Read it again a few months later, and it became one of my favourite books, and still is. I should add, I had no drug experiences in the interim which might have caused me to see it in a different light, and I have absolutely no idea what caused the change of heart. Same thing happens with music...

Another example, which makes more sense: I read William Sutcliffe's Are You Experienced? before I started my BA in anthropology...thought it was really funny, perfect snapshot of the gap year traveller. Read it again in my final year, and it just seemed depressing, ethnocentric - not knowing and funny, taking the piss out of the Indiaaahhh kids like Kula Shaker, but just sad and kind of exploitative, in all sorts of ways. I guess I have got more thoughtful, and more serious, since I first read it... Anthropology will do that to you...

I recently started trying to read Voyage of the Dawntreader for the first time, and have given up... I missed the window of opportunity, for now I can see too many holes, and too much stuff that I just find objectionable. And also, we are all, to an extent, now used to more sophisticated children's/adult's books, like the Harry Potter stuff, and His Dark Materials.

Depressingly enough though, I have got lazier as I have got older... at thirteen, I was reading Wilde, Kerouac, Genet, Dostoyevsky, etc. etc... now I read David Gemmell et al (and some quality SF/fantasy too, honest). I am not sure what that is about... and I do wonder if I will ever force myself to finish the end of the LOTR trilogy. Maybe when I am 90 or so, it'll finally be the right time...

21:06 / 24.06.02

Yes for me, with Middlemarch even. I don't remember why I found the first go-round so tough and chewy, the second time (about five years later) was like eating cake. Then I read all the rest of Eliot's novels for good measure.

I think it is a fact that I had abysmal taste when I was in my twenties, the embarassment of things I loved. I still have a few longstanding favorites; but a shadow of danger hangs over each reread, as this might be the time that the scales will be lifted from my eyes.

That's what I love about reading. The danger.

21:18 / 24.06.02

I'd say that how you interpret a book depends on your own experiences and opinions. And these shift and evolve over time. So yes, you can end up reading and re-reading a book for a lifetime, simply because you find yourself thinking about it differently.

Having said that, a lot of the books I loved when I was younger seem a bit dull now...I can't pick up any of Roald Dahl's books and be as fascinated with them as I used to be. The Foundation series captivated me when I was 12 but now I have to force myself through the books.

I'd say my point is that how you read a book depends on what's happened in your life and what's going on in your mind as are reading it. In a way, our experiences are the filters through which the story has to pass, and they will affect the way we view it.

The Return Of Rothkoid

22:59 / 24.06.02

For me, I find that the fact that my reading's not quite as much driven by academic pressure (ie: read x before Wednesday and write an essay on it) is a big factor in my enjoyment of things now. I read a lot of highbrow stuff at uni, but didn't appreciate a lot of it - and only am coming to it now - because I didn't either have the time to read it properly, or wasn't in the right mindset for, say, C18th fiction at that point.

There's still stuff I can't swallow yet, and am hoping that the time will come. Either that, or a lottery win that'll enable me to have enough free time to knock 'em all over...

08:33 / 25.06.02

I think what Rothkoid said about reading under academic pressure is very true. Also, when I was at Uni I really didn't have enough experience to understand a lot of what I read. The first time I read Emma Bovary, for example, I just didn't get it. What was the daft woman doing?? Whereas when i read it again recently it made so much more sense. Likewise, I've just finished Swann's Way and absolutely loved it, when I know I wouldn't have done a few years ago.
I've developed more patience, for a start, and will read things slowly, but I've also just, you know, lived longer and experienced more.

09:58 / 25.06.02

I've found my reading has slowed down pretty dramatically in the last few years. When I was in school, I used to read a novel a week, minimum. Now I'm averaging about two in a month. I think this is mainly because now I read a lot of other things too - comics, magazines, internet, non-fiction (mostly music & film) books - which is good in a sense, but I'm worried that my attension span is really deteriorating .. instead of just tearing through books like they're not even there, I'm actually finding I have to make an effort to finish something as relatively un-demanding as, say, the last Iain M. Banks book, let alone something really heavy like Joyce or Melville..

Oddly, my younger brother is going through the same 'reading frenzy' phase that I had (he just finished off The Count of Monte Cristo in less than a week whilst reading another book at the same time!), so I'm wondering if it's an age thing..

11:31 / 26.06.02

I do remember going through a very slack period when I was at university - four or five books a term was probably a reasonable average (that's over eight weeks) but I do seem to be back on form at the moment - obviously having no television and not much money is at least partially responsible for this, as I have practically nothing to do but read.

I think perhaps this: I've also just, you know, lived longer and experienced more (Ariadne) is the crux of the matter... I can't think of many things I have read and loved which I now actively despise, since enjoyable rubbish is still enjoyable. I do have a feeling that this might be slightly different had I ever thought that Kerouac and the other Beats were minor gods - I have read of several people who felt let down on rereading them - but perhaps I am being unfair.

Maybe I should have another bash at Middlemarch. And maybe when I'm really old I might even finish Tristram Shandy...

12:50 / 26.06.02

I think perhaps this: I've also just, you know, lived longer and experienced more (Ariadne) is the crux of the matter...

I agree, Kit-Cat. And it's entirely consistent with what cognitive scientists have to say about 'knowledge-structures' or 'frames' and their role in understanding - that context is of utmost importance in the interpretation of texts. That context shifts/has shifted or changes completely when we re-read something; we're re-contextualizing it, framing it differently.

Re Eliot, I prefer The Mill on the Floss to Middlemarch, I think.

14:27 / 26.06.02

So do you (anyone) think it's possible to learn from fiction? Can you learn from the mistakes and confusions of characters and then act accordingly when similar situations arise in your own life?

I'm thinking as i write here but I think the answer (for myself, anyway) is no. I've had to live through things for myself. BUT, I think that's when literature can come in -- by reflecting those experiences back as a universal thing that can be dealt with, learned from, or just painfully recognised.

It also makes me wonder how much more I'll have done in another 20 years, and what I'll enjoy reading then.

Apologies if I'm going off-topic here.

15:13 / 26.06.02

, I think that's when literature can come in -- by reflecting those experiences back as a universal thing that can be dealt with, learned from, or just painfully recognised.

I agree with this, but I would say that literature reflects other aspects of 'universal' experiences - not the universality of such experiences per se, if you see what I mean... one reads an account of a specific experience, and relates that to one's own experience. It's like going through the looking-glass, in a way.

I too wonder what I will be reading in twenty years (apart from Tristram Shandy) - my father still reads dreadful SF, my mother like pop-science and history, and bittersweet heartwarming novels coughcoughcough...

BTW I don't know what the other moderators think, but I've never been too bothered about keeping strictly on-topic in this forum because I rather like the wandering discussions we get here...

17:03 / 26.06.02

this might be slightly different had I ever thought that Kerouac and the other Beats were minor gods

::wincing::

See now, that would be me. But I am always looking for a hero, and that has gotten me in trouble as much in life as in literature. I've hardened up a bit over the years, or tried to.

In the wandering spirit, might I mention that I recently had the most distressing experience... I just rented the BBC's Pride & Prejudice, the one with Jennifer Ehle & Colin Firth? I have never heard one bad word about this production! Am I alone in thinking that it was awful? But that's not the worst part. The worst part is that I immediately afterward reread the book, and all of a sudden I was seeing all the unsubtle easy hits & I could not get what's-her-name out of my head as Mrs. Bennet... the horror, the horror.

::denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance::

What are they going to take away from me next, Watership Down?

17:16 / 26.06.02

Kinda like Disney's "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea" ruined the Jules Verne novel for me...all the characters I'd imagined were replaced by the bloody Disney ones. Argh. And that Nautilus...even at the tender age of 9 I knew that the Disney ship was about as hydrodynamic as a Yugo.

Which is another point to make: A book should be read before you see the movie adaptation. Especially in childhood...books feed the imagination, and the more you stoke those fires at an earlier age, the better it is. Movies kill imagination. Kill it stone dead, stuff it and dump it in the dustiest, darkest corner of the attic. It nearly broke my heart when my god-daughter's reaction to a present of books was "I've already seen half of these as movies, I don't need to read the books." The word books delivered in that tone of voice six-year old's use to describe bugs, the opposite sex and asparagus.

The Return Of Rothkoid

23:03 / 26.06.02

Quite frankly, that's a sack of arse.

A good book will stand up beyond a shithouse televisual or cinematic representation of it. A good book will inspire its own visuals. A good book will reach beyond any ham-fisted, fuckwitted production cost-cutting and breathe its story in the ear of the reader, despite what they might've seen. And most times, they'll agree that the book's better. After all, the point of books is that you make the visuals up yourself. No matter how you'll be told Fight Club or 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea is supposed to look, according to zer studios, what you read will always differ. It's specious to claim that people are going to claim they've seen the movie and therefore don't need to read; surely they're people who are too lazy to read anyway. If so, so what? Let 'em fail to read the instructions on medication.

And I'll not hear a word said against the Disney take on Verne. A Bach-playing James Mason, Kirk Douglas and a kraken? Wash your mouth out.

TO be perfectly honest, many kids today aren't reading books. There's other stuff that's supplanted them. But to suggest that when they get around to doing it - which may not be where your asparagus-toned sproglet is at at this point - they will get something out of it on their own level. It's disingenuous to suggest that inventiveness is killed by TV. Sure, it's distracted, but give a kid with half a clue a good book, and they'll Get It. It's not rocket science, and it's something that Fox and MSN will never be able to bottle.

05:51 / 27.06.02

Kit Cat said: I would say that literature reflects other aspects of 'universal' experiences - not the universality of such experiences per se, if you see what I mean...

Ah, you express yourself better than I do - that's what I meant. You recognise a moment, or a feeling, and see it again in a new light. And understand the character, and what the author's saying, better than you would have done when younger.

Rothkoid: I don't think Grey Area meant to make you so angry! A lot of children do dismiss books in favour of films. With encouragement maybe she'll come round, Grey Area -- you can only try to get her to see books as a good thing in themselves, rather than the second-rate, hard-work option when you can't get a video.

I've found books spoilt a bit by having seen the film - at least for the first few pages. If it's a good book then yes, it tends to take on a life of its own after a while, but it's frustrating.

The Natural Way

08:44 / 27.06.02

And, of course, then there's those rare instances when the film is actually better than the book (or at least holds its own as a great work of art in its own right)....

I find the idea that "kills imagination stone dead" a bit ill thought out, TBH. It can and often does (because the general standard of most films is sooo fuckin' poor), but, well.....it doesn't have to.

08:57 / 27.06.02

Having said that I liked rambling discussions which strayed off-topic, I am now going to add a caveat: provided that we stick with books and writing rather than veering over into film and television, etc.

We haven't quite done that yet, but we're starting to chat about films possibly killing imagination; maybe we should talk about how and why books feed the imagination instead...

09:55 / 27.06.02

To blatantly defy that ruling for a second..

A good movie can fire the imagination just as much as a good book, it's crap movies and crap books that "kill" it.

Sorry, just had to be said. Now back to the matter in hand..

09:59 / 27.06.02

True. Back to books. I was talking about this last night and realised that it's not just that you 'grow into' books, but you can also grow out of them too. Catcher in the Rye, for example, seems tedious now, but i loved it as a miserable teenager.
This is interesting, because it's making me look at my perceptions of all sorts of things and wondering how they have changed, and what I'll think later in life.

12:12 / 27.06.02

Thinking about how and why books feed the imagination ...

I guess there are many ways in which this can occur.

For a start, books have most often quickened or enlarged my sense of things, I think - my sense of place, history, human relationships, specific cultural interactions.

But I can also remember times when the situations and characters of a novel I've been reading have curiously coincided with a crucial situation of choice or change in my own life; and I've perceived my real life actions (in the relationship which at that point has been so occupying my thoughts and emotions) to be somehow fated with a similar significance, even the possibility of moving to a similar resolution to that of the book. These have been times of recognition, of brooding fancies of connectedness, of working through things. I'm finding it difficult to describe just what I mean here and this probably sounds like a load of old codswallop.

Nevertheless, I must say that films haven't prompted in me this borrowed sense of the working out of a 'destiny' - they're too fleeting, too compacted, too visually determinate.

12:42 / 27.06.02

But that reminds me Cav --of something I read, naturally-- of this character who couldn't watch movies because he was aware of the millisecond of light between the frames (rather than seeing continuous moving pictures) & I would guess that people's brains are just wired differently, and value judgments are based on what brains are wired to perceive; this character just thought that movies were stupid.

Regardless of the media involved, I think there's something in your observation of "curiously coincided." Sometimes it does feel that the multiverse places just the right book in your hands at the right time. Or, as Spaulding Gray tells it, the wrong book. But dear me, having been turned back from Film, TV I am now wandering off into Magick...

12:44 / 27.06.02

Rothkoid has the distinction of being the first person to react strongly to one of my posts...and I'm reeling. Whoo. But your point is taken (yes, James Mason as Nemo was good, but I still believe everything else in the movie was crap...OK, James Mason and the kraken).

How do books feed one's imagination? I'd say one way is by bringing new things to your attention. You might start reading a book because the main subject matter interests you, and then through the story become interested in other matters. Example: I started reading "Salt, A World History", and the chapters about the ancient Chinese civilisation prompted me to find out more about their history and culture.

And on the most basic level, books make you visualise. They don't present you with a fully fleshed-out concept of a character's appearance and surroundings...that's up to you.

13:42 / 27.06.02

I'm wondering to what degree our reading experience changing over time is due to having read more rather than having experienced more. For me i think it's definitely the former, though perhaps it depends on how you approach a book. I get more interested in the emotional tone of the language rather than the nuts and bolts of plot or characterization, and as a result, my increased life experience doesn't add as much as my reading experience. The more you read, the more you will get out of certain works, and the more you will see through works which may have impressed you when younger. I don't think simply getting older will do this to you. Although maybe there is no rule to account for taste, since despite the number of books I have read, and the number of times I have re-read it as an adult, I still think the Lord of the Rings is very well written, though it seems to be required for everyone who loved it as a kid to justify why they still love it now, by denigrating the writing skill in favour of other aspects.

In terms of growing to like "adult" books like Eliot or whatever, perhaps you need to be accustomed to putting in more effort and being more patient with something before the subtlties become apparent, qualities which can be difficult when young, no matter how advanced a reader you are. Perhaps it's true that there are some "adult" books which we used to think was code for "boring". When I was a kid I always used to complain when my mum bought ready salted crisps, and I couldn't grasp why you would choose them over flavoured ones, but now I love the subtlety of them and finally understand.... ahhhhh- profound I am!

13:56 / 27.06.02

Books and crisps, interesting comparison! But I think you make a good point, you do get 'better' at reading the more you read, in that you'll take the time to read more complex things (sometimes) and get more out of it. I think that's a separate issue to the 'recognition' thing I was talking about, but worth considering.
On the books and imaginations front, I read somewhere about a young girl who had to be taught to visualise. She hated books and hated being read to, and eventually got diagnosed as, I suppose, having no imagination. She went though some therapy that taught her to create pictures in her head and she started to love reading. That seems really odd to me, but I wonder how many people just have that capacity missing?

14:08 / 27.06.02

Holy shit! Imagine being told by a doctor that you have no imagination. I wonder what kind of doctor specializes in that? Probably the same kind that knows where to find the evil gene.

I've noticed that the general consensus here tends to be that books spur the visual imagination, but they don't at all for me. Maybe I'm like that girl in the story. I rarely if at all think visually, which is why my interaction with writing is always focused on the linguistic texture, and the tonalities it creates. (sorry if that sounds wanky) I chart the emotional progress of the book rather than visualizing the characters moving through a definable space. In fact when I'm reading a book I couldn't even tell you what any of the characters look like. That info just passes me by. Which probably makes me a crap reader, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I greatly enjoy writers who can express what is happening by the tone which they employ, which is probably why I prefer poetry to novels when it comes down to it. It's easier to do away with a lot of the structure and dive right into the language when you don't have as much pressure to "make sense" as you generally do in a novel.

14:17 / 27.06.02

Hey, everyone, Loomis has no imagination!

Sorry. But that's really interesting, that you don't visualise as you read. Even in a straightforward story? i mean something like ... well, like Ian McEwan's Atonment, which I'm reading now. As I read it, or even think about it now, I have a whole house in my head with picures of rooms and people, and I'm only a few pages in. Do you not do that?

14:28 / 27.06.02

I'm like that as well, Loomis. If asked, I can usually pull up a very vague description of a character, but I don't usually visualise as I read. For example, I recently read Andrew Miller's Oxygen, really enjoyed it, but couldn't tell you what the main characters look like without serious thought...

14:29 / 27.06.02

Well now I feel a bit embarrassed.....

I'm trying to recall some of my favourite books and visualize scenes from them..... I suppose I visualize in a very nebulous way, but it has no relation with the physical world in which I operate. Just vague shapes of rooms with people talking, but the people don't have (physically) recognizable features. Kind of like in dreams. You can have a whole conversation with a person in a dream and have a very detailed sense of their importance to you and how you feel about it, but have no specific picture of what they look like, and not just when you wake up. Even when you're there.

Hmmm. Don't know if that makes sense. Now everyone thinks I'm just not paying attention to the descriptions of the characters. Well I count it as a positive thing so there! I like how books for me have their own world which is not relatable to reality. Books for me are not a description of an ontologically superior reality beyond the pages, but a world which has no direct correlation and lives in the sounds and abstract meanings of the chains between the words. "Brown hair" still has a meaning even if you don't visualize it.

14:51 / 27.06.02

Yes, I suppose my pictures are a bit soft around the edges, like in a dream. And everyone's dreams seem to be different so it makes sense that reading will be the same.

14:54 / 27.06.02

This is completely interesting... for me, reading is primarily aural & that's how I write as well, I hear the sentences & write them down. So the selling point of a book, for me, is the voice. I think that's why The Iliad did it for me, although there was definitely a visual aspect there. But for me, visuals have to come through the voice. Sometimes I get the pictures, sometimes I don't... also when I read, I'm very rarely perceiving the picture that words on a page make (c.f. the recent Typographical Innovation thread). Back to what Mystery Gypt said about Ulysses being self-conscious, I feel that you can get the psychology of the book from its voice and the book almost develops into a person.

15:15 / 27.06.02

Persephone- do you mean a singular voice? One which controls the entire book? Or do you mean more of a vague thing which shifts with the tone or with the character currently in the foreground? Either way I think I agree with you. It's definitely the consciousness presented as a whole through the book, or the "total effect" of the book as it is expressed in its language, that gets me. I can empathize more with an attitude taken towards the events of the book, which is manifested through the way in which they are rendered, than with a specific character, unless that character is itself a manifestation of this attitude.

15:29 / 27.06.02

Hope everyone doesn't mind if I jump in here....

I'm in the Persephone/Loomis/KKC camp of my imagination being more stimulated by the way a sentence/work sounds rather than what sort of visuals it inspires. To get a little wonky, perhaps this has to do with the subvocalizations (most) people make when they read. In effect, when reading, you're having a conversation with someone, this "consciousness" of a text everyone is talking about.

18:10 / 27.06.02

Wow. And there was me thinking I was normal...

With certain writers -- AL Kennedy springs to mind -- I am very aware of the voice and the beautiful sentences she writes. Even so, I do visualise the story and characters very strongly. Now the weird thing is, I've always said I'm not a very visual person in that I'd always rather read or listen to a story than watch it on TV or in a film. Maybe the film gets in the way of me picturing it myself.

So much for this thread being inane, KCC. It's gone off topic but this is fascinating.

19:19 / 27.06.02

But ha, Ariadne, I've always said that I *am* a visual person, very much so. Yet when I read I don't visualize, or at least the visualization is definitely secondary. Whereas this is very much what I want from film (but not all), I want to fill my eyes.

Perhaps being visual and being able to visualize are different things. Books, to me, are verbal & that's how I experience them, though to a certain extent I do translate the words into pictures. Pictures, on the other hand, do something entirely else to me that I am rarely able to articulate, or I do very poorly.

Loomis: I think I had in mind a singular voice. I was talking about narrative voice & not character voices. I can't think of any plural narrative voices, but then so much of my reading is premodern... must go puzzle over this some more.

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