As I posted back in October, I’ve been making an attempt to re-read some books that I previously read in my 20s and remember enjoying, or reading classic I had never taken the time to read at all. I’ve also attempted to re-read books from my past that I did not enjoy, thinking that perhaps now that I’m older that I would appreciate them more.
I re-read Michael Crichton’s “The Andromeda Strain,” which I remember enjoying very much in the 1990s. Now? Ugh – what a boring story. Nothing happened! Absolutely nothing!
I then re-read Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” and hated it. Such a bad book.
And don’t get me started on “Starship Troopers” by Robert R. Heinlein. I like sci-fi just as much as the next nerd, but that book SUCKS.
In October I listened to Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” (which I hadn’t read before but it is a classic) and while I didn’t hate it, I didn’t love it either.
Then I moved onto Graham Greene’s “The End of the Affair,” whose audiobook was narrated by Colin Firth (he’s an EXCELLENT reader). And while I enjoyed this one more than the others, I still only give it 3 1/2 stars – and mainly due to Firth’s narration.
I was starting to lose hope. Would I read (or re-read) a single classic book in 2018 and genuinely enjoy it?
And that’s when I hit Flannery O’Connor.
When I was in college I took a class that studied a great deal of Flannery O’Connor. I was a liberal arts major, and so I cannot remember if it was an entire semester of Flannery O’Connor, or just a unit in a class, but basically, I spent WAY too much time studying Flannery O’Connor and came away with the thought that I could not stand Flannery O’Connor’s stories. But in 2018 I’m trying to branch out and reconsider my earlier dislikes in literature, so I decided to give a listen to “A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories” which is a compilation of 11 short stories.
Oh my word, y’all. I still intensely dislike Flannery O’Connor. I can’t even put into words how much I dislike her storytelling. This particular short story collection is depressing at its best. I’ve got two more short stories to go in the compilation and I can’t wait to finish so I can move onto a happy book like John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” or Jon Green’s “The Fault in Our Stars.” Because those stories are DEFINITELY less depressing than anything written by Flannery O’Connor. About the only good thing that came out of a Flannery O’Connor story is a song by Shriekback in 1985 that uses the title of one of her stories as the title of their song (that album “Oil & Gold” is fantastic and was on heavy rotation in my car even into the 1990s):
So I guess the takeaway is that no, I will not re-read a book from my past and enjoy it just as much as I did, or enjoy it more. I had thought about re-reading John Irving’s “A Prayer for Owen Meany” in 2019, but now I’m afraid to crack it open. It’s my number 2 book of all time (“Jane Eyre” being number 1). “Owen Meany” is one of those books I’ve repeatedly recommended to people since I read it in the late 1990s. What if I re-read it and come away disappointed? I’ll be very sad if that happens.
Have you ever re-read a book from your past and come away with a different impression? Comment and let me know what you’d recommend (or recommend I stay away from)!
