The Books Haven't Changed...We Have

-

 Everyone can remember reading the "classics" in high school. And let's be honest, most of us hated them because we were forced to read them. We were told we had to and then had to write those dreaded summaries based off of what we read. 

Let's also be honest in the fact that most of what we read went over our heads. The literature we were reading was written mainly by adults. Then we as teenagers are required to read about the things adults had lived through and expected to understand it. 

Now, don't get me wrong, that is great for trying to expand the mind. And some kids got it. Most of us didn't. I will be the first to admit that the books I read in high school mean different things now that I'm an adult. 

Let's take The Picture of Dorian Gray for example. I read it in high school and loved it. I still love it. When I read it as a teenager, I thought I understood the things Dorian was going through. It wasn't until I reread it as an adult that I realized how little I understood in high school. 

Dorian was haunted. He was lonely, he was impressionable, he had no one to guide him in ways except a selfish, man-child that gave him the worst advice imaginable. Dorian was looking for love and acceptance and he was looking for it in the wrong places. Couple that with vanity and pride and it's a recipe for disaster.

But that's not entirely the point of this post. The point is that books are timeless. We can read them over and over again and still come away with something that we didn't come away with before. That is why literature has stood the test of time. It teaches us to think. To exercise our minds. To open our minds. 

I have read Pride and Prejudice more times than I can count. I know what's going to happen at the end, but everytime I read it, I still find myself rooting for Darcy and Elizabeth. I know what happens to each of the March sisters in Little Women but I still find myself crying and rejoicing alongside them every single time. Same with Anne of Green Gables. Gilbert will always be my first book boyfriend. He makes me cheer and cry and I will always love him. 

This is why I think we should reread all of the classics once we're adults. The books haven't changed...we have.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Holly Novel Series -- by C.C. Warrens

-
Image
  The   Holly Novel Series   is a 5 book series with a 2 book interwoven novel series called   Seeking Justice  and the novella   Holly Jolly Christmas .  Amazon's description of the first book is as follows: "Safety is just an illusion... An illusion shattered by the whisper of footsteps in the darkness behind her." Holly has drifted from one place to the next for as long as she can remember, never settling long enough to build a life. It's the only way she knows how to survive in a world that has no place for someone like her. But when mysterious footsteps follow her home, and she finds a cryptic note taped to her door, she realizes she's stayed too long. The man she's hiding from has found her.  But how? When people start dying and old, forgotten memories begin to surface, Holly finds herself wrapped up in a terrifying mystery with God, a pushy Southern detective, and a killer with one thing on his mind: her." I read this series back in October...
Read more

Welcome to The Plot Peeker!

-
Image
  Hello and welcome to my brand new blog!  I have spent the last few years trying to get into blogging and I have struggled. Big time. All the how-to things say, "Find your niche." Well, that's easier said than done. I love doing so many things. Basically, anything creative I have tried. But it dawned on me the other day that the only thing that has been consistent in my life is a love for books. I am a proud homeschool kid. Yes, I know I'm 35 and not a kid anymore, but I proudly own being homeschooled. It gave me my love for reading. My mom instilled in my brother and I, that books were a very important part of life. Where would we be without them? Books are the gateway to knowledge. And knowledge is power. Before the internet was a thing, books were the only way to learn. We couldn't whip out our smart phone and have the answer to something within seconds. Nope, we had to find an encyclopedia at the library and look it up--and hope the encyclopedia was up to dat...
Read more

Eden Mercer K-9 Mystery Thriller -- by Paige Black

-
Image
 Eden Mercer is a young, K-9 cop in the small town of Nightfall, Oregon. Not only does she have the trials of being a young, female police officer, her past haunts her in ways that takes years of therapy to work through. An abusive cult-leader father, running away from the cult as a teenager, and now trying to liberate her mother and her other siblings before it's too late for all of them. At first, I wasn't sure where the author was going with these books and I almost gave up on the first one. By the end of the first book, however, I was surprisingly emotionally invested in Eden's life. I wanted her to find her siblings, to be accepted by her coworkers for the smart, hard working officer she is.  Each book in this series is, in my opinion, better than the one before. Paige Black seems to find her rhythm the more of the story she writes.  These books are all interconnected and should be read in order. I have not currently read Corrupt Code, which is the newest installment...
Read more