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!

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.

So true 😂Also she will call
him by some cheesy nickname and always straddle him when he eventually breaks through his writers block for some steamy sex. No need to remove a bra.

@TheNameIsDickDarlington Stephen King definitely likes a redhead, doesn't he? And "good legs".

What shocked me about The Stand on a recent reread was that several of the female characters get struck quite casually by men that are not written to be particularly bad guys. And one male character who is supposedly almost saintly has anonymous sex with a probably underage teenage girl and then hits her.
Other sympathetic characters use the n-word quite freely.

Generally I'm not one to judge a writer's work that is of its time (I still enjoy Richard Yates for instance) but when the writer is alive and well and making their views known on X I probably judge a bit more than I otherwise would.

Yes. And I'm pretty sure that Wuthering Heights is supposed to be about disfunctional relationships. The cruelty and selfishness of the lead characters is made pretty clear.

Yes I think viewing Heathcliff as a romantic hero is the folly of youth rather than a flaw in the novel. The author knows exactly what she is doing with this book.

The only thing I liked about the film with the poutacious Keira Knightley as Lizzy was Mrs Bennett played by Brenda Blethyn, much more sensible, hard headed and all too aware of what could happen to her and her daughters.

The lion the witch and the wardrobe. So sad

Yes! Poor old Nancy, they were so dismissive of her. But at least Nancy was there for her kids. Penelope was blissfully unaware of her failings as a mother

Shuffling back in shame to apologise to all CS Lewis fans for mistaking The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe for the Magician's Nephew which is, as so many of you suggested, the book I remembered. Vaguely. Dear me. Thank you all for help.

@SomeCatFromJapan Im forgetting
the teenage girl - is that Larry? It’s been so long since I’ve read it and his various women are all muddled in my head.

Another who loved Jane Eyre at 14 reread at 20 and my god who the fuck does Rochester think he is. Can’t stand his wife so locks her up, tries to commit bigamy with the governess he’s hired to teach his bastard child, she runs off and chances on St.John, a slightly more refined Heathcliff, who also wants to tie her down and then the silly woman goes back to Rochester who has suffered some hardship trying to bump off the first wife; and non of it on her terms. Eee Jane, give your head a wobble!

Daddy long legs is the one I thought of - but I’ve also not dared to go back and read it, as I loved it and am pretty sure now it would come across as way way more creepy and inappropriate. Going to keep it in my memory I think!

With lots of these - tess, Pride and prejudice, Rebecca etc, it’s interesting that first reads when younger give one impression, generally more romantic, and then as an adult you see more clearly what is actually being spelt out and the nuances and complexities there are what makes them actually lasting and excellent stories.

I’ve definitely reread Daddy Long Legs as an adult, and the odd thing is that, because you only have events narrated by the ebullient Judy, you have to remind yourself of the deeply problematic powerplay of the scenario because, for virtually the entire novel, she hasn’t identified ‘Daddy’, so sees no issue, and the reader is alone in saying ‘Ugh’.

The one I find less charming and more infuriating now is I Capture the Castle — it’s still captivating, of course, but the complete acceptance of Stephen’s living in the servant’s cubbyhole, handing over his farm wages, and more or less feeding his dead mother’s impecunious employers from working the garden is a bit much, as is the complete uselessness of all the adults — ok, Mortmain has writer’s block, but he could do something, and the general acceptance that Rose is incapable of earning a living apart from when she flounces around saying she’ll go on the streets — and surely the clever school-leaver Cassandra is employable? I mean, they’re all actually permanently hungry, but no one other than Stephen lifts a finger to rectify that.

I need to find my copy and read it

High Fidelity and Fever Pitch. Loved them when younger but now the main blokes just come across as boring arseholes to be avoided.

@toastandtwo Nick when he's travelling with Tom. The teenage girl is called Julie.
Also poor Harold was only sixteen! Views towards age gap relationships and people's general expected maturity le els have certainly shifted.

Oh yes of course! I had completely forgotten. I don’t remember being at all shocked by that either reading it as a teenager.

Catch-22.

Re-read it until my eyes fell out in my 20s. Picked it up again in my miid-60s. Utter shite.

Yes! I reread Hotel New Hampshire a few years ago which I remembered so fondly. Awful. Really awful, particularly on rape and prostitution.

It's rape in Kenya isn't it. I totally didn't see this as a teenager and was really shocked when I read it again as an adult.

@StamppotAndGravy that's really interesting - I had exactly the same change of heart about the Thursday Next books. There's one later in the series when she's pregnant, takes lots of physical risks and when I re-read it (after having had my daughter), I thought, "Wait, what?!"

ETA: This was meant to start by quoting PP who said Memoirs of a Geisha.

This is the book that first jumped into my mind when I saw this thread. I adored this book when it was first published, I read it so many times, recommended it to others and it was on my desert island list of 5 books that I want to survive whatever misfortune had left me stranded on said desert island.

I read it again after a break of many years and whilst it was still readable, it just felt a bit twee & disappointing somehow.

The other book that really leaps to my mind is Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer. I read this as a young teenager once and thought it was AMAZING. I couldn't understand those people on TV who would sneer at Archer's writing. I read it again, when I was at University and I couldn't see any of what had wowed me when I was perhaps 15/17 and I understood why people are so sneery about his books - with his personality no doubt contributing to that. Although, I have to say, I still enjoy his Not a Penny More novel though I've not read it for decades.

@Alalalalalongalalalalalonglonglilong i think you get a bit of CS Lewis’s sci fi vibe in the the magician’s nephew, which makes it a bit different to most of the others. I love all the Narnia books except Prince Caspian which I find a bit Meh - hard for me to pick a fave although the silver chair might just edge it. I didn’t read the last battle until I was an adult and I found it really emotional knowing it was written not long before his wife died - I found the ending really intense! As a child my mum had always said to put off reading it because it was more of an adult story and I get why.

I found Jane Eyre a lot sillier than I remembered 😂 the essential melodrama of the story seemed more apparent as an adult. Like why does Jane believe everything they say about Grace Poole 😂 Villette on the other hand is just incredible

Great thread.

@decionsdecisions62 I think that in High Fidelity, Rob is quite clearly written as a twat. I'm thinking of when his ex-girlfriend tells him from school that she was virtually raped but he interprets this as not having to worry that she wouldn't have sex with him for no reason. It's so blatant that I think the readers are encouraged to roll their eyes at him.

I think Nick Hornby does this very well, actually. About a Boy is so clearly about Will, not Marcus, just needing to grow the fuck up.

Prince Caspian is spoilt a bit IMO by being told from the Pevensies’ POV. If more of Caspian’s story, from his first dawning of understanding with his half-Dwarf tutor, through the Dawn Treader years to the distress of losing his wife and son in The Silver Chair, had been told from his point of view, we’d have got a much darker, meatier and more interesting tale. Caspian for me is a tragic, complex and under-realised character in the Narnia books.

The Silver Chair is one of my favourites, being a beautifully constructed Hero’s Quest story with main characters who argue like an old married couple.

The Last Battle is an odd and problematic one. It never quite hangs together as a story because it jumps around between too many different worlds and viewpoints, and depends a lot on your knowledge of the previous books, and yet there are still bits, like fake-Aslan, and the eerie closing down of Narnia, which linger in the memory.