Books that have not stood the test of time for you.

This topic was suggested by a discussion on the What Virago Are You Reading Thread. So, what books have you recently reread and found that they do not live up to your fond memories of them?

I'll begin with a really BIG one. Gone with The Wind. I loved this book when I read it at age twelve. Loved the reread when I was in my twenties and even one after that. Then I tried it two years ago and my perception was so different I was shocked with myself. First, I realized that Scarlett was a bitch at the beginning all the way through to the end. Her only redeeming characteristics were her tenacity and her keeping promises. I don't doubt that she would gladly have left Melanie in Atlanta if she had not made that promise to Ashley. Why did I ever think it was romantic!!! Rhett Butler lusting after a 17 year old! Spousal rape! But the big thing for me was the romanticizing of slavery and the glorification of the knights in white sheets.
Yes, I know our sensibilities are different today (thank goodness) and that is why I personally can no longer enjoy a book I once loved. Frankly, my dears, I cannot even watch the film anymore.

All the Edgar Rice Burroughs books that I read some half-a-century ago. I reread a few (including the Moon series, which I had liked best of all, even more than Carter Napier or Tarzan) on Kindle a couple years ago and I couldn't believe just how incredibly bad the writing was.

Nice play on words there Elaine.

I am going to bring up a Virago that has not stood the test of time well. Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann. I read it when it was first published and really enjoyed it. I was a Senior in High School. When I found that it was a Virago...I had to have it! Would that I had never picked it up and reread it. Some memories are best left as is.

We discussed this a few years ago during AV/AA but Peyton Place is horribly written and total crap as well. Like you, I read Dolls in HS and thought it shocking but one reading is enough of that one too. One quality book I found unreadable later in life was On the Road. The sexism, which I had missed as a teen, horrified me as a 40-something.

This is what one woman reviewer said about the book in 2009

'Perhaps my brutality for the novel is unwarranted, but reading about a goal-less, womanizing, borderline amoral loser inspires nothing in lieu of metaphysical profundity. In fact, the only emotional response the novel did elicit was disgust. The treatment of women is very nearly unbearable as Dean Moriarty uses Camille and Mary Lou, abandons them, cheats, demonstrates utter apathy when he is thrown out of his home with Camille, and ultimately calls his friend's quiet, demure, and unquestioning wife a "real woman". '

Another vote for Peyton Place. I read that when I was a teen and then tried it again after VMC reissued it. The Sheik is another one. I'm still appalled by the idea that a woman wrote a book in which the heroine enjoys being raped.

I've been less and less keen on Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance the older I've got. I think I've read it 3 times now - at 18, 25ish and 35ish. Thought it was 'mazin' when I was 18, now, not so much!

I was able to smile through The Sheik Andrew. The plot was so far fetched and so of-another-time that I was able to relax and go with it. In fact, if I refer back to AV/AA (2011?) when I read it, I think I thought it a hoot.

What an interesting conversation. The one that stands out for me is the Chronicles of Narnia. Loved it when I was 11, and then 16, and in my 20s and even the last time I read it in my 30s. But I'm done and the thought of ever reading it again makes me cringe.

Re my remarks about The Sheik above - I went back to 2011 and read what I said then and I did not, in fact, think it a hoot. I enjoyed it - indeed I did smile through some of it - but with serious questions about why Virago published a rape fantasy. Time has obviously softened my opinion. I can remember as a teen LOVING On the Road and being shocked when I hated it as a 40 year old. Perhaps if I read it now as a 62 year old I would like it again. Reading! So subjective!

When I was a young teenager, The Lord of the Rings trilogy completely consumed me, and Middle Earth became more real to me than my little hometown of Trumansburg, New York. I actually cried when I finished The Return of the King, because it felt like being exiled, and I had a premonition that it wouldn't be as special the second time. And it wasn't. At the age of 40, I found Tolkien underwhelming, and though I enjoyed the films, they didn't even come close to that first experience of reading the books in the late 1970s.

Fortunately, there are books like Jude the Obscure that I hated the first time, and that I really appreciated the second time around.

I defended the The Sheik because of the escapism it held for my North Dakota aunts who lived in a very repressed rural, religious community. They were constantly told that they had to be "good" girls and save themselves for the man their father chose for them. The only way they mentally could get away and remain good girls (and have any fantasy of a love life) is if some dashing stranger swooped down, kidnapped them, and "forced" them to live in luxury during the day and have his way with them at night. It is such a corny period piece that no modern reader could take it seriously. I have no idea where I told my aunt's story and the copy of The Sheik I was given by my last surviving aunt.

As I mentioned above, though, Rhett's disfunctional relationship with Scarlett really bothered me on reading about it a few years ago.

>9 romain:: That was pretty much my reaction, Barbara. While I read The Sheik, I got a certain amount of snarky entertainment out of the purple prose and corny plot twists, but when I actually thought about what I'd read, the racism and sexism and all that, I had to wonder why Virago chose to reprint it.

Hey you three, Leseratte2, Liz1564, & Mz romain, that could have been my great aunt or something whose work you are ranking! You may have been more impressed had you gone on to read The Sons of the Sheik. And after all.....the movies based on E.M. Hull's Sheik books "launched" Rudolph Valentino into cinema immortality as the greatest "lover" of the silent screen." So sayeth Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia! I know I panted after him, didn't you? Hmmm, didn't you? LOL!~!
Y'all make me want to go back and read it all over again. hee hee
belvahullp ;-)

>10 rbhardy3rd: I hope that's the case for me and Jude - I am doing Heaven-Ali's Hardy readalong and eventually we will get to it. I was going to miss it out, but I haven't missed any of them so far, so it would seem a terrible shame to not read it ...

#14 I hope so too. To me, it's a wonderful book and one of my favourites of all time but I think you do have to have a bit of a taste for the morbid to really enjoy Hardy.

I've been loving all of the other ones so far (we've got up to Wessex Tales) so hopefully it will be OK!

>10 rbhardy3rd:, 14, 15 - Interesting how people differ. When I first read Jude in my teens I was really impressed by it. A second reading some time in early adulthood left me still impressed but I found it weaker than some of his other works. In later adulthood I was almost irritated at the way he worked things out in the Jude story. The plot seemed contrived and melodramatic, and the "long arm of coincidence" was way too long....