10 Books I Didn’t “Get” Until I Was Older

I started reading almost before I could walk. This isn’t saying much, given that I probably could have walked much sooner but was a lazy youth. I spent most of my time in books, and read whatever I could get my hands on. But just because I could understand the words and the plot, that didn’t mean I was always on point when it came to the more adult content and themes in what I was reading—hence my inability to understand why the nuns in my high school were so incensed to catch me reading Lolita whilst eating a lollipop and wearing my school uniform. It wasn’t the first time or the last that I was caught out as a dedicated but oblivious reader. Here are ten other books I read too early to fully appreciate, oftentimes with hilarious consequences.
1. The Mists Of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley. I read this Marion Zimmer Bradley retelling of the Arthur legend when I was in sixth grade, and got so into the book that I did a diorama and presentation on it for my classmates. This involved me chirping about Arthur and his sister Morgaine “having coitus,” but clarifying that it was okay because it happened during a sacred Stag ceremony. Ask me if I knew what coitus meant. I did not know what coitus meant. Phone calls were made that day.
2. Lord of the Flies, by William Golding. In a book report that still exists, I proclaimed that Lord of the Flies was about “Some choirboys in a plane crash,” thus completely missing the end-of-the-world scenario that precludes this amazing novel by William Golding. I guess I assumed they sung in a choir because they were English? I apologize for nothing. Fun fact: I also framed my book report as the island’s newspaper, known as “The Fly Swatter.” A genius in my own mind.
3. The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka. In this surreal short story by the esteemed Franz Kafka, Gregor Samsa awakes to find, to his abject horror, that overnight he has been turned into an insect. It’s one of the great works of 20th-century fiction, and a harrowing psychodrama. I understood the events without question. What I didn’t understand was that it was not a comedy. That’s right: I could think of nothing, at the age of 10, more humorous than your dad beating you with a cane because overnight you had turned into an insect. I even remember chuckling as I turned the pages.
4. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This popular indictment of the Jazz Age, viewed by many as the highlight of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tortured career, was lost on me completely. While I correctly viewed Daisy as vapid, I completely missed who Gatsby was as a character. Shaking my head as I moved quickly through the book as a preteen, I kept thinking, “Jeez, guys, cut Gatsby a break! He throws great parties! Daisy should BE so lucky!”
5. Flowers For Algernon, by Daniel Keyes. I did not understand that the man had a low IQ and that it then became a high IQ. I. I really have no way of explaining this. I guess I thought he was just…getting more comfortable in his own skin? I also didn’t understand why the book was named after the rat and not the man. To my credit—I am not proud of this.
6. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis. I understand absolutely everything about this book. I loved it passionately, and spent more evenings than I would care to recount trying to escape to other lands through various closets, drawers, and once, a laundry basket. That said, the allegorical Christian elements escaped me totally. Because I was a tiny pagan.
7. A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. In many ways this remains one of the scariest books I’ve ever read, and I’ll forever find the saccharine season of Christmas-tide slightly more frightening. It wasn’t until I got to college and the book was presented to me as a text designed to point out the social and economic disparity between the classes that I realized I had missed something. Seriously though, reread it—it’s like Karl Marx telling you a bedtime story.
8. A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, by Betty Smith. One of my favorite books. I recently re-read it and was shocked at just how much I’d repressed: the protagonist being attacked by a man in the stairwell of her building, the boy who refused to stop breast-feeding until his mom drew a face on her breast in order to scare him away. This book is full of shocking tidbits! It’s also the best. I guess my adolescent brain froze out what it could not process.
9. The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. A more boring story of doing the deed has never been written. I understood that Hester had been cast out for doing something untoward, but I thought it was for having her dead husband’s baby. This is a detail I completely made up. Probably to save myself from quietly foaming at the mouth in a feminist rage.
10. Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe. I read this once as a kid and remembered it fondly as the tale of a shipwrecked man living on an island. When I recently reread it, I was forced to edit my summary. It’s about a shipwrecked racist appropriating a land that doesn’t belong to him, all in the name of White Man’s Burden. Barf.
What books baffled you as a kid?