What books are better to read after age 45?
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Anonymous
I've read it three times, not out of great love, but once as a young teen, once in my late 20s at the Beach when the pickings were slim and once in my late 40's for a book club. Felt differently about the characters each time. Still wouldn't list it as one of my favorite books, but that experience of growing and changing with it was amazing. |
Anonymous
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In 10th grade, we had to read 6 books from a list over the course of a year and do a reader response journal that was handed in. 2 of the books I read were Tess of the D'Ubervilles and Madame Bovary. I can't imagine how funny it would be to read my reader's response journal to those two books now, and I should probably re-read them at some point.
Books that should be re-read once you have children include the first couple books in the Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing series - re-reading the chapter about Fudge's birthday party was so fun as an adult. |
Anonymous
| The buttocks and the banjo |
Anonymous
Funny, feel the exact opposite. I thought it was romantic as a teen. As an adult, Rochester & Jane's relationship seemed eff'd up and don't even getting me started on the ex locked in the attic... |
Anonymous
I read that book in my early twenties after being assigned Angle of Repose in college. Both incredible books |
Anonymous
I just started rereading Jane Eyre this week! I'm 44. Your comment reminds me of Wuthering Heights, through. When I read it as a teen my mom told me she thought Heathcliff was hot, and my reaction was "are you crazy? Heck no." I reread it again about a year ago...and my opinion has not changed. On newer books, I loved the two books (so far) in the Thursday Murder Club series. I don't think younger me would have loved a book about a bunch of 70-somethings in a retirement community but I'm just old enough now, with parents in their 70s, that i think it's funny and charming. |
Anonymous
| I can verify that after about age 50 you can read a book you read 10, 20 or 30 years ago and not realize until halfway through it that you have read it before. It's one of the delightful perks of aging. Same goes for some movies. |
Anonymous
Yep. Good lord, was Gatsby not the book I read in HS. |
Anonymous
| I like memoirs. I feel like I'm making sense of my life, trying to decide if I made good decisions and reading memoirs is a way to see others going through this same process. |
Anonymous
Highly recommend this! My DD is in middle school, but this year there were two books that I “always sort of meant to read.” Your kid will judge you harshly for not finishing, so it’s a great motivator to actually read/re-read all those Great Books you have been hoping to get back around to someday. |
Anonymous
Ha, yes, that was my more or less my impression of Wuthering Heights as a teen/young adult too : all the protagonists are crazy and the whole book is enjoyably overwrought and silly. So I have never felt compelled to re-read it. But perhaps I should, and like the first PP on Jane Eyre, would now go the opposite direction and find new depth and literary meaning! 
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Anonymous
My teen and I both read Jane Eyre concurrently a few months ago (I had read it as a teen, but didn’t remember much about it), and neither of us really understand why it’s so many people’s favorite book ever. (So many people have told me it is.) |
Anonymous
I honestly don’t think I really grasped a single novel I read in high school. |
Anonymous
yes! Both were some of my favorite books in my early 20's. I'm 47 now--I need to re-read them. |
Anonymous
I think I will too! I’ll probably get homesick as a Western gal |