Too often, the books that you’re required to read in high school English don’t feel especially relevant. Maybe it’s the way they got taught to you, or the fact that many of them were written so long ago, or maybe you just weren’t in the right headspace to try to figure out what Darl Bundren was even talking about. So, while the idea of returning to these classics as an adult may make you shudder, there are some books worth giving another chance—no matter how you felt the first time.
Picking up a book that you’ve already read can transport you to the place and time when you first encountered it. It can also show how much you have changed over the years, picking up nuances that you missed the first time around or finding plots that seemed pointless to suddenly be poignant. For instance, parents who pick up George Eliot’s Silas Marner, a book that has bored teenagers for generations, may find meaning in the story of adoption completely missed by teens eager to finish the dang book already.
With that in mind, here’s a list of 13 books worth revisiting in adulthood. The list is full of instantly recognizable names, ranging from Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird to the magical realism of One Hundred Years Of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.
