Many years ago my sister read Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander book and if she was a singer she would have composed beautiful arias about how amazing it was to read.
Being a bit of a rabid reader myself, I thought “let me check out this incredible piece of literary gold!” and picked it up. I think I made it as far as page 10, maybe 15, and I gently closed it and declared that it sucked. So much for that.
Over the years a lot of people who love to read and also tend to read books that I enjoy have talked on and on about how much they love not only that one book, but her entire series thus far. I kept scratching my head and figuring, ah well, not everyone likes all the exact same books. I have an affinity for reading books about Middle Eastern women, teenagers in love with vampires, and boys who live under stairs and end up being incredible wizards but not all of my friends and family are going to read those same things with as much joy as I do (except my sister who has also read those same things).
One day I was at my parents’ house and I spotted Outlander lying about and my mother mentioned that while she had finished it she hadn’t liked it at all and wouldn’t be reading further into the series. For reasons that I don’t understand I asked if I could take it home and give it another shot at some point in the event that I found myself with absolutely nothing else to read besides the side of a cereal box. It sat there on my night table for months.
One day in between reading a non-fiction yoga book and a non-fiction dog training book I decided my life needed a little bit of non-reality and with a skeptical sigh I picked up the book I had loathed. And right now, almost 300 pages in, I am dying to know what was going on in my life that had me so distracted that I couldn’t get into this book because it is incredible.
I kind of resent the fact that life doesn’t allow for me to lounge about on the couch eating cookies and reading. I also apparently need to go buy all the other books in the series now. Alas, there are worse things.
Have you ever given a book a second try and discovered it was much better than you had previously anticipated?
I can’t say I’ve ever re-started a book I once hated, but I CAN say that when I was introduced to “Outlander” I wasn’t that into it, but gave it a shot. Fortunately, I listened to the audiobook, which was read by the most wonderful reader – Davina Porter. She’s a magnificent reader and has done all of the Outlander series just marvelously. I’m up to “Drums of Autumn” which I think is book 5. They are all EXCELLENT.
I put down very few books. I can think of only two in my entire life. This doesn’t mean I enjoyed every book I read; only that I didn’t hate them enough to stop reading. I guess I was hoping something meaningful would happen before it ended.
I have, however, reread books I totally enjoyed … and enjoyed them again.
I have that Love / Hate relationship with most books Stephen King has written.
He manages to make the first half so dull and full packed with boring character background information that I often take several months just to struggle trough it (Not that I remember much of it when I finally do get trough)
Only then the second half starts together with all the action that I hardly ever dare to put it down and manage to read the second half often in less than a week.
As I see it some books need to be read at a certain age in order to understand the plot properly. I hated Dostoevsky, but i recently started to read once again his books, and now i find them extremity well written. The same thing happened to some movies, at first i didn’t like them, and the second time i was pretty engrossed.
I agree, Mia. I hate reading “the classics” in high school, but in my 30s I bought a bunch of them and plowed right through, loving every one.
I found that I really disliked the first three chapters of Outlander, as I really didn’t much care about all the plants she was collecting, but then at the very end of chapter 3, it certainly picked up and loved it. I’ve re-read that book and some of the ones in the series three times now because after awhile I start missing Jamie and Claire, but I always skip that boring part in the first three chapters 🙂
YES, and I am so glad I did! Somehow Jodi Picoult’s The Pact ended up in my possession — I think someone must have given it to me as a gift, because I really don’t think I bought it. But anyway, I started reading it close to when I first received it, and HATED it. I tried to keep reading, because I hate to give up on books and rarely do, but I just could not stand the book. Then, several years later, a college classmate mentioned how much she LOVED the author Jodi Picoult. The name rang a bell, so I decided to give my old book a shot. I went home to my parents’ house one weekend, picked it off the shelf, and tore through it like it was The Best Book Ever Written. It still boggles my mind that I hated it so much one time, and loved it so much the next — so much that I now own, have read, and love every single Jodi Picoult book. (Except her newest. It’s on my Christmas list.) So thanks for asking. I think I needed to get that off my chest. 😉