Is there a book you used to love but not any more?

[CurlewKate]

Brideshead Revisited used to be my favorite book. I reread it regularly in my 20s and 30s. Now 20 years later I am reading it again, and it seems trite, shallow and pretentious. I'm so disappointed!

Worth watching though. I'd run off with Richard Chamberlain, priest or no priest. I need to go to confession now, I used to be a good Catholic girl.

I too love this book and find it re-readable. I gave it away and had to buy another copy later.

I would have said The Crimson Petal and the White was my favourite book at one point.

Then I came back to it years later and found it unsubtle and the characterisation of the women in the book my the male author made me somehow uncomfortable. I still think it's really interesting but I was very disappointed.

I'll come back to it in another decade or so and see how it lands then!

I absolutely love the Magicians nephew, one of my favourite books of all time. I recently re read it with my kids and loved it just as much. To me it's much better than the subsequent books. The sleepy woodland with portals to all the different worlds, the bell that wakes the statues, the tree with the fruit of life, amazing!! @newnamethanks the creepy old guy is the boys uncle who he lives with. He has a secret office in the attic with a locked door, the kids access it from next door. So there is nothing inappropriate about it really.
(Yes I get I've missed the point of the thread)

Harry Potter, but solely because I cannot cope with how the children are treated by almost all the adults in their lives. The teachers are terrible!

Absolutely. Her home, and the majority of the family income from the Longbourn farm and rents are hers only as long as her husband lives — after he dies, she and her daughters will be living off her tiny income in some rented rooms in Meryton, probably with a single servant, and it will be far, far harder to marry the girls off once they’ve descended into genteel poverty.

If Darcy regarded the Bennets as a ‘low’ connection when they were still living genteelly in Mr Bennet’s (presumably) family home, with servants, land, a carriage etc you can imagine how much ‘lower’ they would be living in rooms over a shop, as a widow and five daughters, doing their own cooking, remaking their old dresses to wear to the Assembly. And yes, definitely lucky to be proposed to by a Mr Collins.

I always wonder what would have happened had Mr Collins arrived on the scene before Bingley and paid court to Jane — would Mrs Bennet have encouraged her to accept, or thought her beautiful eldest could do far better? And if the former, would dutiful Jane have contemplated accepting for the sake of being able to keep the family home?

Re P&P, to be fair, Mr Bennett does admit that he’s been culpable, in not having bothered to save money. And Jane A hardly made him out to be a paragon!

As for Mrs B, yes, her entirely laudable mission in life was to get her daughters married, so that they wouldn’t end up as penniless spinsters, or have to go out as governesses, but the fact is that by the standards of the day, and among the social circles they moved in, her behaviour was too often thought to be vulgar, if not actually beyond the pale. Not to mention highly embarrassing to Lizzie. And as such, it could easily put off any potential suitors.

It’s pointless trying to judge any of them by today’s standards (though goodness knows I dare say quite a few mothers - and fathers - still manage to be embarrassing) - these novels were written over 200 years ago.

Little women. Slow and dull now

This isn’t the plot of any of the Narnia books. You may be thinking of The Magician’s Nephew, but there isn’t an old man who lives alone - he’s one of the children’s uncle whom he’s staying with!

@Iwasafool and other P&P analysers, you would enjoy Longbourn, Jo Baker’s excellent below stairs version. Skewers Mr Bennett very neatly and raises some fascinating plot points.

Thank you bookworm. Where on earth have I got that from I wonder?. I'm claiming age as an excuse.

Same here! It can't speak to me now, as a 50 something,.in the same way it did toy 15 year old.self!

@Alalalalalongalalalalalonglonglilong agree The Magician’s Nephew is wonderful and just as good now as it was when I was a child. I also absolutely love and loved The Horse and his Boy. As a child I didn’t enjoy the Silver Chair but I do now… still not crazy about The Last Battle. The Narnia books are some of the best ever written for children IMO and it makes me so sad that barely any kids nowadays that I come across have read them or intend to.

I thought this was about if we no longer like a book we used to like? I'm not sure why my choice seems to have been selected as the one that has to have the book, the author, the characters justified.

I used to love it and now I don't.

Thanks I'll look out for that. I wonder if it is on kindle? Must go and look.

I did read it and liked it when I was early teens. I haven't tried it again, it doesn't appeal somehow.

I'm starting to think Heathcliff was a gaslighting narcissistic 😢 I used to love him

Brodie was always meant to be about inappropriate relationships . I can't think of one I enjoyed and have reread as I tend not to; I was obsessed with Daddy Long Legs though and I wonder if that stands up to time.

The L-shaped Room. I reread it constantly when I was at the bedsit stage of my life. When I read it last year I could see a whole lot of things wrong with it. Wish I hadn't read it again.

Tess's life was supposed to be dreadful, that is the point Hardy was making.

I darent reread The Shell Seekers now after some pps. It was a go-to comfort read years ago.

Yes for absolutely loathing Wuthering Heights when I reread it as an adult. Heathcliffe is ghastly - as is Cathy. And it’s poorly written too. Jane Eyre I still adore.

For those of you rejecting Tess, it’s a masterpiece in the way it shocked the Victorian audience into understanding the double standards applied to Alex and Tess. She is victimised by both Alex and Angel - and society. The moment the blood drips through the ceiling and we realise she has murdered Alex in revenge for ruining her - brilliant. The shallow way that Angel replaces her with her sister at the end is a stunning indictment of men. Go Hardy.

Bridget is the ultimate unreliable narrator, the whole point is that she's not fat but thinks she is. That's why I hated the film where they just make her fat and you lose all the humour and nuance of the writing.

I don't think Renee Zellweger was even close to fat in the film though?

Mine is Stephen King. His new books are mince, have been for years, but I absolutely adored his older stuff as a teen and twenty-something. I recently reread The Stand and it is so incredibly misogynistic it's hard to take, and more than a bit racist at points as well. I do still enjoy The Shining but I have to very much take it as of its time.
It makes the modern-day Mr King's X pontifications all the more galling.

I agree with the PPs who have said Stephen King books.

I absolutely devoured them throughout my teens but going back to read them as I've gotten older I realised that he seems to struggle to write female characters and kind of recycles the same type of woman over and over. Usually a tall redhead who is beautiful and intelligent, had a bad childhood (usually molested or abused in some way).

Having said that the male protagonists are often very similar, writers with drinking problems who are struggling with writers block, often with a beautiful, tall, red head wife who wears a white blouse and no bra.

The shining was still enjoyable, Carrie is good for a quick read but any of the longer ones have absolutely lost their allure to me.

Memoir of a geisha

I loved "Heidi" as a child. I read it so many times and I loved the old tv series.

Decided to reread as an adult. I could not get over how religious it was.