Reading A Book Too Young

Catch-22 when I was in elementary school. Re-read again in both HS and College.

I could re-read A Man In Full or I Am Charlotte Simmons.
I am planning on waiting a few more years and re-reading Ian McEwan's Atonement and Donna Tart's Secret History.
I got my hands on a copy of The Exorcist when I was about 9 years old and it really messed me up for a long time. I would like to read that again as a more mature person.

I intend to re-read Don Quixote, I started it in mid high school and exams took over and I never got back to it. As I never finished it, I don't count it as an actual re-read lol

Can you recommend a translation? Originally Posted by Lauren Summerhill

The first I read was the Starkie translation. When I decided to re-read it, I started with Starkie (still had it on my bookshelf) but after about 70 pages switched to the Grossman translation. They're both good but I preferred the latter.

Don Quixote is one of those books which lose a bit when read in school -- too much emphasis on it being a Great Book (which it is) at the expense of emphasizing that it's very funny. Of course, you can't always appreciate the subtle humor, versus the broader forms we're used to today, when you're young. But I think I may finally be old enough to appreciate Austen.

Not a book, but a poem -

I read Coleridge's Kubla Khan or A Vision in a Dream when I was 14 and still very innocent I re-read it as a ahem mature 20-year and saw all these symbolisms that i missed the first time around. At 14, I had no clue that the fountain and the caves could have meant anything other than the fountain and the caves. And who knew the sunny pleasure dome was referring to the olympic stadium?

Not a book, but a poem -

I read Coleridge's Kubla Khan or A Vision in a Dream when I was 14 and still very innocent I re-read it as a ahem mature 20-year and saw all these symbolisms that i missed the first time around. At 14, I had no clue that the fountain and the caves could have meant anything other than the fountain and the caves. And who knew the sunny pleasure dome was referring to the olympic stadium? Originally Posted by Lovely Victoria

+1. I've always loved that poem.

Also, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Ansley - I LOVE A Man in Full...its really weird; Tom Wolfe came up this weekend and I couldn't remember the name of that book that I loved by him and that's the one I was thinking of!

I'm currently reading Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics....I read it in College, but I had a lot on my plate - worked full time, single parent and full time student - I just didn't have the intellectual resources to remember all the stuff I was trying to absorb - at least not beyond the test - I used to call myself an academic bulimic ;-)

Having grown up in a small town with a pretty low bar as it relates to scholastic standards, I missed a lot of the stuff I should have read the first time around. Just my luck, I have someone amazing in my life that has been turning me on to the classics. In the last month or so, I've read Lolita and The Great Gatsby and am reading the works of the Marquis de sade, along with the some stuff on science and politics. It is SO MUCH FUN to be intellectually stimulated...even if I didn't read it the first time, I'm relishing the opportunity now.

Ansley - I LOVE A Man in Full...its really weird; Tom Wolfe came up this weekend and I couldn't remember the name of that book that I loved by him and that's the one I was thinking of! Originally Posted by Sydneyb

I'm so stealing Lauren's words...
"Just psychically attuned to hot, intelligent women"

I read, Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, for the first time at 16 or 17...and the little bit of it I understood completely blew me away. The rest of it was so far over my head it might as well have been written in Sanskrit or something.

I re-read it every few years & still think that way about parts of it. I may never figure it all out...but it's interesting to keep trying...

I was nearing the end of my current read, and so, was rooting around for my next one. My search carried me to this list of the "top" 100 novels:
http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/

Criticisms of the list can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_...00_Best_Novels

Since I prefer novels I kept my search to novels. But I also love history.

A book I had not read, but in another thread on this board, was reported to be one of the best books read by the various readers that reviewed it, was Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August. That's the book I chose to download to my Kindle.

Like you, I don't re-read books. And nearly every time I see a movie of a book I have read, I am disappointed in the movie.
Originally Posted by charlestudor2005

Another Cormac McCarthy example of a movie capturing the book is the Coen brothers No Country for Old Men. They almost filmed the book. It didn't look like they did a screenplay.

A book I had not read, but in another thread on this board, was reported to be one of the best books read by the various readers that reviewed it, was Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August. That's the book I chose to download to my Kindle. Originally Posted by charlestudor2005

I think that The Guns of August is one of, if not THE, best history book ever written. It's certainly one of my favorites. In addition to being a real page-turner, it teaches (among many other things) one of the most important lessons of history -- that people are always fighting the last war.

Cormac McCarthy is my favorite contemporary writer. No book is ever captured on film but he won the NBA for All The Pretty Horses and there was an okay-enough movie made of that book with Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz.

"The Scarlet Letter" was assigned reading for one of my advanced college seminars. All of us gushed at how much more we enjoyed the book compared our first read as high school freshman. I should read it a third time.

I recently tried to re-read Capote's "Answered Prayers" but did not complete the task. He seems so dated, although I did like "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

Anna Karenina; The Wise Men, a fabulous book about the history of the Cold War; Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; all the Harry Potter books and Lauren’s choice, The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (the whole series actually). I have read all of these books twice.

I read Catcher in the Rye when I was 14. I didn't like and thought it sucked. I re-read it several years ago to see what I had missed at that young and callow age.
It still sucked.
I also read Catch-22 when I was about 15 and liked it. I didn't really get it at the different levels until I was somewhat older (and had done 6 years in the Army).