Last week I talked about how I wrongly assumed Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club was a bit of saccharine melodrama. I’m glad how wrong I was! Here are some of your stories of books upending your expectations.
Sherry B. wrote: “That book for me was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Although I am an avid reader, I was never drawn to novels that seemed macabre or gothic, so I never read that one. Instead, what I learned about the story came strictly from popular culture. I went on to major in English in college and became a teacher but still never read Shelley's novel until I had a student teacher who wanted to teach it to a class of high school seniors. Then I read the novel and was pleasantly surprised to find that Dr. Frankenstein was the "real monster" not his creation. He had rejected the very human creation, depriving him of love and illustrated that he, Dr. Frankenstein, was the true monster. I was forever thankful to Mary, my student teacher, for choosing that novel for the class. They really enjoyed it too.”
Jeff G. wrote: “This resonated with me, because I had the same experience with the Larry McMurtry novel Lonesome Dove. I'd gotten it into my head (due no doubt to the TV series, which I hadn't seen) that it was some sort of saccharine sweet Touched By An Angel type fare. I couldn't have been more wrong.”
Julie W. wrote: “I loved your story about changing perspectives on books. This happened to me recently with Danielle Steel. Having been a kid in the 80s and 90s, my only knowledge of Danielle Steel books came from looking at covers in the grocery store check-out line. I'm not a big romance reader, so I thought I would never read her books or be interested in them. Fast forward to now and a good friend is a huge Danielle Steel fan. I read widely, so when she offered to loan me one of her favorites, I accepted. I was hugely surprised when it was not an open door romance, just a sweet historical fiction with some closed door romance elements. My first thought was, 'I would have loved this in high school!' Just another testimony that we should never judge books by their covers.”
See you next week!
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