Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme that was originally created and hosted by Rukky @ Eternity Books starting in August 2019, and was then cohosted with Dani @ Literary Lion from May 2020 to March 2022. Book Nook Bits has hosted since April 2022, with Dini at Dini Panda Reads as co-host from February 2025.
Oh, this is an interesting one…this is just one of the many reasons I love doing LTB, the topics are always so intriguing! I’ve been so glad this month to get back to them. Let’s dive in!
Let’s Talk Bookish 27th March:
Right Book, Right Time? Reading for the Season You’re In
(Alli @ Alli the Book Giraffe)
Prompts: Do you prefer reading about characters who are in a similar life stage as you (age, career, relationships, etc.)? Has your preference changed as you’ve gotten older? Have you ever re-read a book and experienced it completely differently because you were in a different stage of life? Do you think books come into our lives at the ‘right time’ and are there any books you think you’d feel differently about if you were younger or older?
Like most things when it comes to books, I find I switch back and forth a little on this. And it’s genre dependent. Yes, sometimes I want to read about a character at a similar life stage, but usually in a way that marks them as different from me/my real life. Sometimes I just want pure escapism and will jump into YA where characters make silly teen decisions and get caught up in one of two extremes – the minor day-to-day school life issues that you know, as an adult, are minor, but which feel to the character to be world-ending, or the fantasy save-the-world-from-an-evil-threat-or-from-an-evil-dystopia. But as I have got older, I find more and more I appreciate characters who are dealing with (gulp!) approaching middle age, or in the midst of it, or who are going through the book while dealing with work life/careers.
Relationships I don’t really factor in – if I’m reading Romance, I don’t expect the characters to already be together long-term at the start of the book. Similarly, I quite like romance subplots, or I just…don’t find it impacts me too much if the character is single or not!
I do occasionally reread books from my younger years, and I definitely find I experience it differently. I might understand more, or feel differently towards a particular character – I’d liken it to watching The Little Mermaid. As a kid, I couldn’t understand why Triton was so strict with Ariel, and there are some elements which although make sense as a kid, you can see the humour in them more as an adult (though I always did laugh at the line “Bet they don’t reprimand their daughters!). As an adult, I can appreciate Triton’s concern even though I don’t agree with him, and have more of an understanding of just how young Ariel is, especially when she yells “Daddy, I love him!”
So yes, just as it happens in film and TV (other notable “oh I get this now” moments – Shrek, “do you think he’s overcompensating for something” and The Simpsons, like…so much in The Simpsons) it happens in books, too.
I do think books come into our lives at the right time, or we might pick up a book, chuck it on the TBR/shelf, and read it when we’re ready. Sometimes it’s perhaps a conscious decision – we know we’re not quite ready for that book, but read it when we are, and sometimes I think it’s more of a subconscious level. Or you pick something up and realise hey, this is really, really applicable to my life right now!
I think with most books, you think about differently depending on your age – YA is a great example of this! I don’t think I’d feel frustrated with teen characters if I was a similar age to them. And no matter the genre or audience age of a book, I have a deeper understanding of why characters might act like they do. Unfortunately, I better understand grief and depression and anxiety now, so a character who may have annoyed me as a teen, I have more grace for as an adult. Not just negative emotions, but I think when you’re younger, you rely a lot more on your own experiences and emotions, but as you get older, you gain a better understanding, a deeper empathy, and a more nuanced look at the world.
How do you feel about reading books at different life stages? Are there particular ones that stand out to you where you’ve read them at different times, and gained something different from them?
Unwrapping Words 