While She Knits--Reprise Favorites?

[idiosyncreant.livejournal.com]

There 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...

Comments

[lylassandra.livejournal.com]

realizing that officer dude in Pirates of the Carribean was Prince Humperdink

WHAT?

[twtd]

There are countless songs that I've had that apply to but not really any books. If I don't like a book there's normally a definite reason and rereading it won't change that. A Tale of Two Cities was actually less compelling the second time that I read it. I didn't enjoy or appreciate Citizen Kane the first time I watched it. I still don't like it but a really good discussion in a film class made me appreciate it.

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.

[shadowgirlvg.livejournal.com]

I'm a film student and I definitely have to agree with you about Citizen Kane. It's a film that you start to appreciate more after more viewings and discussions, though never necesarily like. (Sadly it's practically the holy treasure of the film world. You can't take a film class without at least talking about it.) I've already seen it several times and there'll probably be more before I get my degree.

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?

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

I agree that music is this way more often with me than books. Especially music I have to perform that I didn't choose. Sometimes I'll start out thinking, "Why this?" and by concert time I'm in love with it.

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.

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

Queen didn't strike me that way, either. I thought it was brilliant from the beginning.

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.

[cleo]

Hmmm. I loved QOA the first time I read it. It took acclimation for me to like The Thief.

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.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

I strongly disliked Mary Stewart's Touch Not The Cat when I first read it at the age of twelve, as well as another of her suspense novels, The Ivy Tree, which I read a few years later.

Now I think both of them are brilliant.

[rosaleeluann.livejournal.com]

It took a re-read for me to like The Hero and the Crown, but I don't think that it was so much the need for second exposure as it was that I was just was too young to really get it the first time. (I was about eleven.)

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.

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

WHAT?

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

It's for moments like this that I have IMDB as one of my links in my search bar...

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.

[(Anonymous)]

Jane Eyre was like that for me--read it once and thought it was okay, read it a second time and liked it a whole lot better.

(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

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

Ditto on the music. Singing or playing--a lot of the time you're struggling through the notes going WTF IS THIS NONSENSE (I'm looking at you Mr. Stravinsky) but then the first time everyone sings it more or less right all the way through, you go--OH. *ding!*

Which I guess applies to some books as well--you struggle through the plot and the convolutions, and when you hit that last line you just go OH and it all makes sense/is suddenly worthwhile/etc. Right now I can only think of Wicked, which wasn't so much unreadable until I finished it but more of a conspiracy theory that suddenly made sense in the end...any others?

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

Mm, I feel the same way about Hero and the Crown. I liked/understood it a LOT better the second/third time around. It's still not my favorite, but I understand it better.

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

A Great and Terrible Beauty is the first one that comes to my mind, because the first time I read it I thought it was okay, but the second time I understood everything a LOT better (partially because I had already read it once) and it was much more enjoyable.

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 amnesia or 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. :-)

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

I loved The Ivy Tree! I've managed to find several of Stewart's books at used bookstores recently, but not those two. Just reread Nine Coaches Waiting. *sigh*

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

Very, very well said, jade. EXACTLY how I felt, too.

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

Actually, I've come to learn that with most Great Literature-type books, I need not so much to reread them as just to get past the first 200 pages. Thought I would never get through Middlemarch, until I passed the 200 mark, and then suddenly it was terrific -- but this has happened with many classic novels. They require a little faith.

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.

[octopirock.livejournal.com]

I read Hero and the Crown when I was about 11 too, and barely liked it enough to finish. I guess I should try again, especially since I liked so many of McKinley's other books.

[octopirock.livejournal.com]

The Subtle Knife. I loved The Golden Compass, but every time I started tSK I couldn't get past the first 50 pages. After reading tGC 7 or 8 times I tried again on audiobook, managed to get though it, but wasn't thrilled. After I read (and loved) The Amber Spyglass I went back and tried again, and realized I liked it after all.

[adalanne.livejournal.com]

I honestly can't think of a book I disliked that I've ever reread. Seriously, I liked QoA. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have read KoA and just tried to pretend The Thief was the only book in the series.

Maybe y'all are just a lot more forgiving than I am. ^_^

[emmaco.livejournal.com]

I'm sure this has happened more than once (though not with QoA, I adored that from the start) but one example I remember is Steven Brust's books. I had haphazardly read some of his Vlad Taltos novels and thought they were OK, but when I decided to go back and read them in publication order, I was delighted by their wit and Brust's obvious enjoyment at trying out different storytelling styles. Similarly, the first time around I thought his homage to The three musketeers, The phoenix guards, was OK but a bit annoying, but the second time around I thought it was brilliant!

[emerald-happy.livejournal.com]

Y'know, it wasn't til the whole Costis letters thing (analysing his character to try find out who on earth was writing those letters) that I began to fully appreciate Costis' character.

<3

[emerald-happy.livejournal.com]

Actually, this happens to me a lot. The first time I read a book that I go on to love, I'm too bewildered to know what to think so I avoid it and it translates into dislike. But the voices in my head make me pick it up again and then I get used to it and love it.

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.

[peggy-2.livejournal.com]

Any random stuff the principle applies to?

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.

: )

[idiosyncreant.livejournal.com]

He's channelling, then.

It was a funny thing to say, so I didn't fact-check. (Besides, it got a response, right?) *shameless*