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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2012-06-07 01:41 pm (UTC)The story I always tell to illustrate how you read a book differently at different ages is Of Nightingales That Weep, by Katherine Paterson. It was one of my favourite books when I was 9-10, and it was definitely aimed at a YA age range, although I think when it was written there wasn't really a separate YA literary demographic. Anyway, in the book, the main character has sex. It's not written explicitly, it just fades to black and then she wakes up the next day and finds that the guy has left her a 'morning after poem'. When I read this as a nine-year-old, I had no idea that that is what had happened (who knows what I thought the 'morning after poem' came after). But it was just so outside my frame of reference that it passed me by. And I read that book so many times in those years that I could probably recite it off by heart! Years later, when I went back and read it as an adult, I was astonished that I hadn't noticed that. (It is stuff like this that gives me little patience with the censors who think that this kind of stuff is harmful in books aimed at children/teenagers. They won't see things unless they interest them.)
ASoIaF is a...complicated series. I feel uncomfortable recommending it, even though I read and enjoy it, because it is so problematic on so many levels.
In terms of taking criticism of your favourite things personally, I've been there. When I was 16, a book-reviewer in a newspaper wrote a critical (although ultimately positive) review of The Amber Spyglass, the third book in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. At that point, I basically lived, breathed and dreamed HDM, so anything other than gushing, fawning praise was going to sound negative to me. I wrote this incredibly pompous letter to the reviewer, correcting her on supposed factual errors and accusing her of having not read the book. She, for some unfathomable reason, didn't respond by laughing her head off, but instead wrote back saying that if I felt she hadn't done a good job, why didn't I try to do it myself. Ever since, I've been a newspaper book-reviewer. And it taught me a very valuable lesson about subjectivity. I still think of writing that letter, and cringe, though.
Sorry for the deluge of nostalgic reminiscences.