lizziethereader:oldshrewsburyian:lizziethereader:Weekly Bookish Question #122 (March 31st - April 6t

lizziethereader:oldshrewsburyian:lizziethereader:Weekly Bookish Question #122 (March 31st - April 6th): What’s your policy on giving authors another try when you read one of their books and didn’t like it?I’m in my early 30s, so still decidedly at an age where “maybe I’ll like it better in a later life phase” applies to books. I hated (!) the first non-Christmas-Carol Dickens I tried, because I didn’t know Dickens’ narrative tropes and I was just deeply upset by how badly everything was going for the protagonist. I also find that mood and season affect how I encounter books, so there are several that I’ve shelved for later.There are several objectively good authors whom I’ve tried (and so far failed) to get into. Edith Wharton, for instance: I should love her, right? But I have never finished a Wharton novel, and I’ve tried several. This despite the fact that her prose is beautifully shaped. No, I don’t get it either.Still, I don’t have anything like a “second try” rule. I’ve heard good things about Richard Russo, for instance, but his Straight Man was so boringly about the anxieties of a privileged middle-aged white man (arguably satirizing the genre, but still) that I just cannot be bothered to give him more of my time.What was the first non-Christmas-Carol Dickens you tried, if you don’t mind me asking? Yeah, mood and season definitely affect my enjoyment of books as well, so much so that I’m sometimes worried a book I didn’t like hasn’t gotten a fair chance… But I don’t have the time to reread all of them just to be sure. David Copperfield, and I sobbed inconsolably when the flute-playing teacher was sacked. I read it a number of years later and loved it. (“Janet? Donkeys!”) The next Dickens I tried, incidentally, was Great Expectations, which I was lukewarm towards in high school but have loved more with each rereading. -- source link
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