I'm very sad about the Harry Potter series, and i loved reading it the first time around (that was shortly before the last 2 movies came out).

On the one hand, I loved reading the books - I devoured them in record time and lost quite a few hours of sleep because i just couldn't drop them after starting with Order of the Phoenix.

On the other hand, I learned afterwards what a foul human being JKR is. I'm someone who can split the art from the artist, and normally i would just do that as long as JKR doesn't see a penny from me, not even as PR (i borrowed the books, but i was in the cinema for the last 2 movies - can't undo that).

But the reevaluation of the books after JKR's twitter tirades made some themes obvious for me that are not that visible if you don't look for them - or don't want to. The treatment of the elves, the nearly all-white-school, the only black teacher called Shacklebolt, the using of jewish stereotypes for goblins... I am pretty angry at JKR for souring something I enjoyed, and I was pretty angry at myself for not noticing many things earlier simply because i let my guard down.

Looks like i fall into the first group, even tho i was around 30 when i read the books. Only defense i have is that i am not a native speaker and read them in english.

That last one hits home. In high school in the early 2000's I had to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It was awful and clunky and boring.

Smash cut up a few years ago when I turned 40 - I thought, "maybe I've got a different view now and this will be better".

Nope, it's all boomer you shit about "kids these days".

I read Catcher in the Rye pre-high school and thought Holden was great because he recognized everyone for being fake, then I read it in HS and decided Holden was a whiny brat that needed to STFU. Then I read it as an adult and realized he was just a traumatized kid trying to cope.

It's like reading the bible when you're an adult and realizing the evil character is God.

I wasn’t enjoying Blood Meridian. What life experience do I need to enjoy it?

The first ever book I read in a foreign language, turned out to be a lot different from what I remembered when I picked it up and re-read it maybe 2 decades later after having mastered that language.

Just cause you only liked something when you were young doesn't mean it isn't good. Everyone talks about the perspective you gain as an adult, but people don't talk enough about the perspective you lose along the way.

There's also re-reading books you read as a child and going "Oh, this influencing my development makes a lot of sense"

I'm pretty sure either Black Beauty or White Fang turned me into whatever the hell I am now

Dune. I have read it 6 times.

The first time was rough. When I was 15.

The 6th time was still difficult.

But it fucking does something to my mind every single time

First time I read Lord of the Rings I believe I was 11. And I hated it. Because I was 11. Also I think it was just the first part, Fellowship . Thankfully I've read it maybe half a dozen times since then and I've loved it more and more each time and it's been an entirely different book every single time.

Reverend Insanity.

Reading it now feels slightly like a dnd lonewolf murder-hobo campaign but protagonist is obsessed with telling you he is 500 years old.

Tho I do like the world still.

When I was a kid I absolutely loved the Narnia series, to the extent that I was depressed when I finished the last one. As a young adult I tried to reread the books and was stunned at how heavy handed the Christian propaganda was.

I never could finish 1984. I got maybe halfway through it and was like 25% interesting world building, 25% a sad, bitter, sexist person lamenting the way of things (particularly that be can't just fuck every woman, but also the lying totalitarian goverment) but also having no spine to even consider doing anything about it, and 50% him sneaking around to fuck some horny manic pixie dream girl against the rules. Unfortunately, id have probably enjoyed it more if I had read it at 16

Has anyone watched that Rupert the Bear cartoon recently?

Most racist shit I ever saw. Turns out a vestige of my childhood was Rupert hanging out with his Asian friend Ping Pong and a bunch of long nailed, thin moustached "Chinamen". Gollywogs level stereotypes and bullshit.

It's rare to be actually, physically agog.

Kind of happened to me with with The Mists of Avalon. I started reading it and was like 'meh, this is sooo boring and sooo long, I will never finish it' and I started reading something else. I went back to it couple years later and loved it. I never re-read books though. Even the books I read 20 years ago I remember so well reading them again feels pointless. I remember all the good parts, character names, some of the dialogs. I would constantly feel the urge to skip parts I already know.

We're the Counting Crows "good"?

The threequel.

Some time a long time ago, I decided to sink my teeth into a nice, long, schlocky sci-fi series. I picked up Kevin J. Anderson's Saga of the Seven Sons. I made it maybe twenty pages in before I decided it really was not for me.

Some time not as long ago, I noticed I had some Kevin J. Anderson books I'd never read. I made it maybe ten pages in before I remembered it really was not for me.

Ernest Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" is just bad and I'd like anyone to try and convince me otherwise.

I could not get through Lord of the Rings or Dune when I tried to read them as a teenager. But I recognized that these were good books that I needed to give another try. Read them again after college and loved them. (Got through all of the original Frank Herbert Dune books, I don't think any of Brian Herbert's follow ups had been written yet, I don't know that I would have read them anyway)

Most of the other books I couldn't finish as a child, I recognized as garbage (Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, for one), and have seen nothing to change my mind about them to give them another try.

The poisonwood bible. I loved it in high school, because I was an oppressed little atheist/agnostic with hyper religious parents at a christian school. It was brilliant, vivid, groundbreaking, and wild in its defiance of cultural norms...

and now it's just a sort of sad story of how the christian mindset mirrors colonial/empire ambitions and everyone gets hurt.