Top Ten Tuesday » Books We Feel Differently About Now Time Has Passed

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

This week is a freebie week! Bloggers are either picking a TTT topic they missed or making up their own. Ellen decided to pick the past topic, "Ten Books You Feel Differently About Now That Time Has Passed."

Sierra's Picks

Liveship Traders Trilogy · Robin Hobb · Originally 5 stars, now ???

I picked up the first book, Ship of Magic, when I visited the US at age 12. My dad brought me the third book, Ship of Destiny, when I was living in rural India. I'm not even sure if I ever read the second book (The Mad Ship). These books were about 800-900 pages each. And when I say I 'read' them, dear friends, what I mean is that I found two perspectives that I loved (out of the 6-10), and followed just those to the end. Ergo, I cannot actually give this series 5 stars since I actually didn't read the entire book/series. I may eventually rectify that... but we'll see when that happens. But I still do get ALL the feels for Brashen and Althea, so those two still deserve all the stars!

Esio Trot · Roald Dahl · Originally 5 stars, now 2 stars

It PAINS me to say this. Roald Dahl is one of my absolute favorite childhood authors. I had a chance to re-read this short story with my little brother last year, and I found myself a little alarmed at the message it was sending to children. Patrick Rothfuss wrote a review about it (read it here). He does a much better job of explaining it than I possibly could.

Winger · Andrew Smith · Originally 4 stars, now uncertain

This is starting to become a familiar trend to me. This isn't very PC of me, but I DETEST reading books in the first person that feature teen male protagonists, primarily within the contemporary genre. I don't care how realistic they are, it just makes me incredibly glad not have been born a male. Although the subject matter and the plot was interesting, I slogged through Ryan's incessant chatter of girls and boobs. I will be re-reading this book in order to read its sequels, so I will be able to accurately rate it then.

Enid Blyton · Originally 4 & 5 stars, now feeling disillusioned

I'm guessing many of you might not know this author. She was a prolific writer of children's books in Britain, and was enormously popular when I was a child living in Singapore (an ex-British colony). However, I found out a few years ago that she was elitist, sexist, xenophobic, and racist, and that many of her books had to be re-edited to remove such references. Reports have also surfaced via her younger daughter's autobiography that Enid was a terrible mother. I should be able to keep her maternal ability separate from my opinion of the author. But Enid was marketed as such a loving and kind figure, and as a child, I imagined her reading so many of her stories out loud to me, that I can't help but feel betrayed. For what it's worth, this woman marketed herself brilliantly.

Note: I'm counting the Liveship Traders trilogy as 3 out of my 10 spots. And Blyton will have the honor of spots 6 through 10 since the woman has written hundreds of books.

Time to see what Ellen has picked out!

Ellen's Picks

1. Uprooted · Naomi Novik · Originally 5 stars, now 4 stars

This was a gentle change of mind, not harsh.  I typically only give five star ratings to books that I know I'll reread over and over, and surprisingly, I haven't felt any desire to go back and revisit Uprooted like I thought I would.  However, I still really liked the book and it maintains a high rating.

2. Illuminae · Jay Kristoff & Aimee Kaufman · Originally 4 stars, now 3 stars

The more I sat on this book, the more I realized that it had flaws.  I grew to find that I disliked the AI construct with real passion and I thought the main characters were less than impressionable. The book was still a unique and fun read, however, so it gets a middling three stars.

3. Forbidden · Tabitha Suzuma · Originally 5 stars, still 5 stars

When I first finished Forbidden, I thought Suzuma's point had been won. [spoiler]The book makes a strong case in favor of the legalization and destigmatization of... consensual incest. [/spoiler]Now, my original feelings have crept back in.  Despite this, nothing about my rating has changed.  Forbidden is still a book that messes with your head and heartstrings in a powerfully bold way.

4. The Merchant of Venice · William Shakespeare · Originally 4 stars, now 2 stars

I think that no Shakespeare play should be judged until it's been seen performed.  Perhaps also, no Shakespeare play should be judged before it's been studied.  I originally thought that Shakespeare was some sort of before-his-time hero when it came to issues of racism.  Just look at the amazingly moving character of Shylock (a Jew) in The Merchant of Venice!  

However, one of my college professors crushed my illusions during one office hours meeting.  In fact, he told me, Shakespeare intended Shylock to be a clownish, mockable figure. A man of his age, Shakespeare was an anti-semite.

5. The Piper's Son · Melina Marchetta · Originally 2 stars, now 5 stars

This is the only book on my list that saw me change my mind for the better!  When I first read The Piper's Son, I was so confused.  I couldn't penetrate the Aussie slang and I couldn't get into how the narrators were so different — a young man, barely out of his teens, and a middle-aged woman. I just thought the whole book was weird, and so not in the vein of the Marchetta books I'd read before.

But then, because I find Australian accents incredibly soothing, I bought the audiobook (for the express purpose of falling asleep to it.) And something funny happened as I listened to The Piper's Son in fragments, over countless nights. I started loving it.  Now, I've both read and listened to the book many times over and absolutely adore it.

6. Hallowed (Unearthly #2) · Cynthia Hand · Originally 5 stars, now 1 star

This book represents my most dramatic change of heart.  It has everything to do with the final book in the Unearthly trilogy. Not only did things not go my way in the last book, but it ruined everything I loved about the second novel. In fact, if My Lady Jane hadn't been written by two other, blameless authors, I probably would have skipped it, because I'm still so upset with Cynthia Hand!

7. Flat-Out-Love · Jessica Park · Originally 5 stars, now 3.5 stars

As in the case of Hallowed, the later works in this series by affected my love of an earlier installment.  After Flat-Out-Love, I thought that Park's writing kind of went off the rails with her successive books.  Things got both cutesy and contrived, and worst of all — dull. Now, I can't remember Flat-Out-Love without feelings of regret.

8. Lola And the Boy Next Door · Stephanie Perkins · Originally 5 stars, now 4 stars

With some time and perspective, I realized that Lola is my least favorite book in Perkins's contemporary collection. I still like the book a great deal, but I'm able to see its weaknesses, when before, I was totally dazzled with admiration.

9. Sense and Sensibility · Jane Austen · Unchanged rating

Like The Merchant of Venice, this is another book that changed for me once I'd studied it in college.  I used to think the novel was the pinnacle of romance, but really it was the movie adaptations that led me to believe that.  Until college, I'd never read this book all the way through.  When I finally did, I realized that, in actuality, Sense and Sensibility is quite bittersweet.  [spoiler]Both Marriane and Elinor marry, but Marriane doesn't marry her first choice and Elinor doesn't marry the first iteration of Edward that she believed in. [/spoiler]

1o. Twilight · Stephenie Meyer · Originally 5 stars, now 2 stars

I think Twilight is an excellent example of how my taste has matured over the past decade.  When I first picked up this series, I was sixteen.  I thought the book was perfect.  Now, I read more critically, and I bring a greater awareness of the world with me. Now I know... Bella is a drip.

---

Ellen: There we have it, folks. I have to say, I found making this list to be as easier time than I thought.  All I had to do was use Goodreads to look at my standing ratings and find the ones I was surprised over. I thought it was interesting — only one book saw an improvement for the better.

Sierra: I actually had quite a challenging time with this one. Apparently I'm a very decisive person when it comes to ratings.

What about you? Do you ever like a book more as time passes?