While She Knits--Reprise Favorites?
Jun. 13th, 2008 02:30 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
idiosyncreant.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
queensthiefThere are quite a few of us that had to read Queen of Attolia a second time before we could really think it was a good book, before we were converted about Irene really deserving Gen, or forgive MWT for what she did to him.
(My almost-14-y.o. sister's reading it for the first time *fingers crossed*)
This isn't the only book that takes acclimation, even revisiting to be appreciated.
What books have affected you that way?
Any random stuff the principle applies to?
(Fries with Ranch, a hit song, realizing that officer dude in Pirates of the Carribean was Prince Humperdink...heh)
I, for one, took an awful long time to truly value Magus Dahling...
(My almost-14-y.o. sister's reading it for the first time *fingers crossed*)
This isn't the only book that takes acclimation, even revisiting to be appreciated.
What books have affected you that way?
Any random stuff the principle applies to?
(Fries with Ranch, a hit song, realizing that officer dude in Pirates of the Carribean was Prince Humperdink...heh)
I, for one, took an awful long time to truly value Magus Dahling...
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Date: 6/13/08 08:03 pm (UTC)WHAT?
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Date: 6/14/08 12:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 6/14/08 12:16 am (UTC)Wait, no he wasn't. At least not according to IMDB (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001697/). Unless it was an uncredited cameo? But they usually catch those too. ANACHRED EXPLAIN YOURSELF.
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Date: 6/13/08 08:11 pm (UTC)As for QoA, it actually made me go into KoA with a great deal of trepidation because I thought that QoA was so brilliant. I never went through a period where I disliked it or thought that it was anything less than fantastic.
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Date: 6/13/08 08:42 pm (UTC)As for the Queen, I didn't understand it the first time I read it. I think I was too young at the time. But just last year I found the King and thought it was the best thing ever, so I re-read Thief and Queen and...well I'm in this community aren't I?
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Date: 6/13/08 09:29 pm (UTC)QoA, on the other hand, had my heart and my admiration on the first reading -- at least once I got past the you-know-what.
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Date: 6/13/08 10:10 pm (UTC)Fire and Hemlock, OTOH, took a rereading before I liked it. I thought it was very well done, but it took a second reading to really grow on me.
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Date: 6/13/08 11:02 pm (UTC)The book that I really had to reread to appreciate was The Great Gatsby. It's such a deep and complex text; I just could not understand that when I read it in high school.
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Date: 6/13/08 11:18 pm (UTC)Now I think both of them are brilliant.
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Date: 6/14/08 01:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 6/17/08 11:07 am (UTC)Thanks for the tip!
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Date: 6/13/08 11:34 pm (UTC)And Queen.... well, to be completely honest (don't, like, hurt me or anything) but I didn't absolutely love Thief or Queen the first time I read them. Thief I liked well enough I guess, but I hit Queen right in the middle of a readers slump (we can blame that!) and I just simply wasn't in love with it. I liked it enough to finish, and that was that.
Fast forward two months. (It was only two months? It seemed longer than that.) I read King. OHMYGOODNESSITWASSOAMAZING. I read it five times in a row. I went and got Theif and Queen and read them. Why hadn't they been that amazing the first time?
Darn readers slump.
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Date: 6/14/08 12:17 am (UTC)(This is off topic: I recently read Eva Ibbotson's novel The Morning Gift, and thought I'd recommend it here. There are occasionally times when you would badly like to smack the main characters, but it's a good and funny book. Historical romance of WW2, paleontology, snark, and, of course, true love. I enjoyed it.)
~Feir Dearig
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Date: 6/14/08 12:22 am (UTC)Actually, KoA was like that too. I didn't like it as much the first time around--I didn't get what it was supposed to be doing, and I was afraid Gen was like deathly ill or
had amnesiaor something and who the heck was this Costis guy and why was he interfering with the story? And then I came to Sounis, read some people's musings, went back and reread it--and, partially because I knew how it ended and could see what it was building up to, I LOVED it. It's still a hard one for me to read, as I just discovered on this latest rereading--holding all the strands of "and this is how this is going to turn out and this is why this other things matters" is really difficult! Which is why it is so brilliant.QoA, on the other hand, has always been perfect. :-)
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Date: 6/14/08 01:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 6/14/08 01:22 am (UTC)OH! Here's an example that few may know: Men of Maize, by Miguel Angel Asturias (he won the Nobel prize). Absolutely brilliant, but the first hundred pages make no sense until you've read the rest of the book. We read it in my book group, and the group divided clearly into two factions: those that couldn't finish it, and those who finished it and thought it was one of the most amazing things we'd ever read.
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Date: 6/14/08 04:03 pm (UTC)I'm so glad I marched myself through Middlemarch. And my mom is glad I made her march through it, too.
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Date: 6/14/08 05:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 6/14/08 04:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 6/14/08 05:38 am (UTC)Maybe y'all are just a lot more forgiving than I am. ^_^
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Date: 6/14/08 08:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 6/14/08 11:43 am (UTC)It's happened for MWT, Terry Pratchett books, The Curse of Chalion (Bujold) and Rosemary Sutcliff.
But I tend to reread it a day or two later so I don't know if this counts as as an acclimation period.
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Date: 6/14/08 12:56 pm (UTC)feta cheese. Once I discovered how beautifully it pairs with kalamata olives and Mediterranean cooking my entire perspective changed.
I think it was triggered by reading about the regional food in the Attolia books.
: )
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Date: 6/14/08 04:07 pm (UTC)Though the story goes more like it was one of the Western things we bought as a treat in Japan and so with salads it became a great piece of eating something unAsian!
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Date: 6/15/08 06:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 6/17/08 03:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 6/15/08 10:55 pm (UTC)More (lengthy) ruminations follow:
For myself, I was also probbly much older when I first read the books than most peeps here and maybe that had an affect as well. I purchased Theif on a whim my last half of university because it looked nominally interesting, was on sale, and had won a newberry. (As an English-teacher-to-be I thought I had an obligation to read Newberries or something). It didn't interest me enough to read it right away though, not for another year or so, when I was on a business trip, and desperate for something to read. I had finished the other book I'd brought with me, and though I doubted Theif could compare I cracked it open and.... Omigosh! I liked it better than the book I'd been INTERESTED in! It quickly became a favorite of mine. I raved about it. About it's structure, about the twist, about the writing.
When I heard there was a sequel out I was very "mleh" about it as I thought the Theif hadn't really needed a sequel, and sequels tend not to be as good. Then King came out and I figured I might as well give the sequels a shot, though how they could possibly compare was beyond me. (It may not have helped that my libraries copy of queen was the hideous cover. I would like to think that I don't jusdge a book by it's cover but... c'mon, don't we all to some degree? In any case it couldn't have helped.)
I found myself pleasantly surprised by the writing at first, and then Gen got his hand chopped and both my attention and emotions were utterly engaged. At least right up until Gen confessed his love.
I didn't buy it. Not that I thought Gen was lying mind you... it's just that my credulity, which I can usually surpress or at least ignore past slightly wonky plot bits in a book, completely snapped. My suspension of disbelief shattered. The cynical part of my brain saw characterization being pushed aside for profit. Afterall, how could Gen go from feeling as he had expressed in the first book (and that was BEFORE she'd taken his hand), to loving her. (This is another reason I wonder if order would affect perception. Those who read Queen or King first are not introduced to Irene through Gen's vitriolic thoughts about her). I kept reading though, and his explanation that back then he had thought she must be a fiend to make him feel that way about her mollified me a little, but it was like a bandaid over a gaping wound.
I loved MWT's twist at the end of Theif. IT was perfect because the groundwork was there for it all along, when you went back and re-read it it was so obvious, you wondered you hadn't picked up on it before. Part of me said that Queen was the same... but my partial skim back didn't convince me. In anycase I finished and moved on to King, which almost made up for Queen because it was so so so very perfect, it made me WANT to like queen. So I re-read it fully. Nope, still didn't buy it. I found I had to just... ignore the fact that yes, it was completely implausible for Gen to love her in Queen, and just accept that it was reality so I could wallow in my happy place (King.)
About a year later I read it a third time. This time.... I could begin to see the groundwork. It was much MUCH more subtle than what she laid in Theif which is perhaps why I missed it the first two times. I still feel slight twinges in my SoD, but they are more around thngs like... Why would Irene settle for cutting his hand off? and How on Earth did she come to love him back?
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Date: 6/17/08 03:57 am (UTC)nitpicky
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Date: 6/15/08 11:04 pm (UTC)I liked Twilight. A LOT. I recognized that it wasn't the best written thing ever. It was obviously a freshman effort, but I thought the plot made up for the unpolished writing, and I liked the characters and how Edward and Bella's relationship unfolded. Loved it in fact. Loved even more that here was a vampire book (a genre I had always been fascinated by, but afraid to read), in which sex was not a major focus. And in fact, a large part of their relationship was defined by the fact that they couldn't go there.
New Moon I felt rather the opposite about. The writing was a lot more polished, but I didn't like the characters near as much (I wanted to slap Bella and Edward each repeatedly), and several parts strained my disbelief. (He automatically assumed he was dead? Really? The voice in her head was just herself knowing that he loved her? Really?)
I had mediumish feelings about Eclipse. Several things bothered me in it, but New Moon had already drained the series of joy for me so....
I won't say that I LIKED New Moon after giving it a second skim through.... but I did APPRECIATE it more and tolerate it better so.... I guess that counts for something.
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Date: 6/16/08 12:17 am (UTC)But I don't know about other books, because if I don't like them the first time, I usually don't read them again (thankfully I didn't realize I was rereading The Thief).
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Date: 6/17/08 04:32 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 6/17/08 09:45 pm (UTC)