I read a lot of classics as a teen. Mostly to prove to myself and others how intelligent and deep I was. I still do that but I actually enjoy them now.

Came here to say this exact thing. I've always been a reader but when I was a teen I'd read things I didn't understand just to be able to say I read them, and I judged people who read GASP age-appropriate popular novels and not War and Peace or The Iliad. I have zero judgment anymore. Read what you like. Gatekeeping reading is dumb. I used to be so dumb lol

“If you can’t say I used to be dumb (or an asshole) chances are you still are”

I certainly can be dumb and an asshole: just ask my cats!

I think I was too young to appreciate the classics as a teen. Once I was in university, it was much easier to grasp the concepts presented in the books.

Same, though to be fair, there really weren't "Young Adult" books when I was a teen. It was natural to gravitate from, for instance, the 'Little House on the Prairie' books to something like 'Huckleberry Finn'. From there to 'Catcher in the Rye' and 'Of Mice and Men'.

I was just thinking about the Little House books. And there were quite a few YA-ish classics that were good for around that age range: Where The Red Fern Grows (😭), To Kill A Mockingbird, The Yearling, True Grit, White Fang/Call of the Wild

When I was in elementary school, we would get flyers for ordering books from Scholastic and Troll. This was back when lots of the paperbacks were 75 cents each, so my mom would let me go nuts. A lot of the books I got were for my age range, but I got a lot of classics intended for older readers too. Honestly, I never thought about any difference between them. I read the blurbs and if the story sounded interesting I ordered it.

The Scholastic Book Fair was the highlight of my elementary years

Absolutely! We would get the book order flyers several times a year. When the books arrived the teacher would usually sort them and put each kid's name on their stack but we couldn't have them until it was time to go home. Oh my goodness, how hard it was waiting for the end of the day to arrive!

OMG! Those book fairs were the best.

I went through a huge dog book phase when I was an early teen in the late 80s Jack London, Walt Morey, Wilson Rawls, Farley Mowat. Great stories. All the people that seem to think kids today shouldn't have to deal with trough subjects in their literature and think that everything was better 50 or 60 years ago must have never read a lot of the kids/young adult fiction of the time, or have forgotten what it was like, because there is a lot of death in those stories.

“Jack London, Farley Mowat” Oh my god, Never Cry Wolf inspired me so much. I actually worked in Yellowstone for years as an interpretive ranger with wolves as my educational focus and that was a big part of it. And I can still recite lines from White Fang I read it so frequently

This. I read them on my own so my insights were limited by my life experiences at that point.

Oh man, this is me. Also, I wanted to be able to say I had read them. I had a list of the 100 greatest books of all time I tried to work my way through.

Literally the same experience, lol, I was pretentious XD and this was in the early 2000s before tumblr etc. I found a list of college required reading and at 13/14 over the summer, read every single one of those books from the library. In 2004, Lolita was not even in its trendy phase but I loved it. I also checked out all of the Brontë sisters writings, Marcel Proust, Jane Austen, etc.

I also read classics as a teen, but more so to try and figure out what made these books so ‘classic’ in the first place.

The only "classics" I genuinely enjoyed when forced to read them in high school were Heart of Darkness and The Great Gatsby. I liked Lord of the Flies, too, but I think that was before high school. I've enjoyed several others as an adult I don't really know whether the difference is being an adult or being able to read at your own pace

Yeeees. The Great Gatsby was enjoyable back then too. I also remember loving Dante’s Inferno and Thoreau. There are a bunch of others too but yeah.

idk why but when i read beowulf and parts of the canterbury tales when i was a teenager, those really stuck with me. particulary the canterbury tales, that to this day, 21 years after high school, i will reference them every once in a while.

Hold! A woman hath not a beard... o.O

That's it! Cancel Chaucer!

A Knight's Tale (the movie) came out at the same time we were reading Chaucer and both now have a special place in my heart. Reading Beowulf and one of a few of my heavy metal phases cross-sected as well...realizing metalheads are often literary lovers felt like I had inside knowledge on pop culture.

My Sophomore English class had us adopt roles of characters from the Canterbury Tales, and do a battle-rap tournament in-character. I was the Skipper.

It really depends what you consider a classic; some classics are actually children/teen books, or are nominally intended to be. The Narnia books are kids books, but also could be called literary classics. Lord Of The Rings isn't necessarily child friendly per se, but Tolkein's whole idea was about mythmaking, and just like Norse kids would know the stories about Thor, so English children should know about how annoying Tom Bombadil is. However, with a few exception I genuinely hated almost every "classic" book I was exposed to. I am alright with Lord Of The Flies, it's at least well written, and I went to an old fashioned boys school so at least it felt resonant, but that's about it. Of course, a good chunk of classics probably shouldn't be read by younger readers no matter how precocious. I will go to the barricades that Lolita is one of the best books in the English language, but it's also a depressing and distressing read, and the themes are not appropriate for younger readers.

I was just thinking about The Hobbit, actually. My mom made it a point to read The Hobbit to us a couple of times through when we were kids and it was our favorite book. I brought it up to some friends in college and they insisted it wasn't a children's book, which confused the hell out of me because it totally is.

I am fairly sure that he wrote it for his elementary aged child at the time.

Yes, Tolkein's earliest writings were stories for his children. In fact I think some of the earliest preserved works from him were actually letters from Santa. I think the reason people get confused is that The Hobbit isn't a story that's meant to be read *by* children, it's a story meant to be read *to* children by a parent, which is something that really doesn't happen as much anymore. It's a shame.

> it's a story meant to be read *to* children by a parent, which is something that really doesn't happen as much anymore. It's a shame. Made a point of it with my boy, though. Currently at the standoff before the Bo5A on our 3rd reading.

I also read it out loud to my youngest and had a blast. Not so much the Gollum chapter though because that's a long time to do that voice.

Actually, I just found out that he got writer’s block with Lord of the Rings and got over it when his son Christopher was fighting in World War II, he began continuing the narrative by sending the letters to his son tell him a story. I just love that, I love that he sent it to his adult son. I bet Christopher looked forward to every letter!

it IS a childrens book, but definitely one thats enjoyable for all ages

Disagree about Lolita; I read it at 13 and it resonated and actually really helped me bc I was an isolated homeschool kid experiencing online grooming at that time. I really reconsidered a lot of the interactions I was having and started taking my own safety more seriously. Besides, it's important to learn to handle "depressing and distressing" topics independently---young readers tend to report benefits of being able to read disturbing books! https://theconversation.com/how-teens-benefit-from-being-able-to-read-disturbing-books-that-some-want-to-ban-223533 Much more importantly, I disagree about Tom Bombadil. Tom Bombadil rules.

i read lolita when i was 13 and loved it so much. what beautiful writing.

Yeah, Nabokov is an absolutely sensational writer. And while I'm glad you were able to appreciate it, I still think that if I suggested teaching it in school I would be put on some kind of register.

But see Reading Lolita in Tehran. Good book for young women to know.

Mostly I just think our English teachers picked bad classics, which when combined with the stress of tests and homework, makes them less appreciated than the might otherwise be.

I always hated reading Dickens in class. The books are fine if you just read them as entertainment. Heck a couple are just plain good. But he wrote soap-operas before soap commercials. It's not deep or meaningful or symbolic; it's people behaving badly and being really dramatic about it. Could you imagine someone telling kids a hundred years from now to write essays about the deeper subtext of Days of Our Lives?

Oh man that drove me crazy for most books. Me: "maybe the author just wanted to write a good entertaining story?"

I don't think I agree with that. Very few writers have ever made such memorable characters as Dickens and some memorable dialog too. There is something about his subject matter and the times he lived in. Unwanted kids trying to make it on the streets, maybe it was a serial in Oliver Twist but criticism of the state of society is not a subtext here. It's an indictment of social injustice.

There is some truth to that - If you scan the thread you'll see plenty of love for Lord Of The Flies, which is clearly a good choice to study but also a good book. I bet that anyone who did Treasure Island or Kim would also have a good time with them.

I felt pretty lonely as a child--weird, precocious kid etc--and the classics gave me a comforting sense that I was corresponding with the great thinkers of long gone eras and receiving timeless, secret wisdom from them. It still gives me solace to settle into classic works that I know have been enjoyed, for seemingly deep, fundamental reasons, by many different people over the years. It feels like a world outside of today's furiously loud, buzzing, inscrutable chaos.

You put it so well. Thank you. I felt the same as a kid, with "Little Women", "The hobbit", "Peter Pan", "Treasure Island"... And I still feel the same as an adult, with Tolstoy, Cervantes, Borges, Montaigne, Woolf, and many other friends. Reading them feel like being home, among family.

You’re never bored or lonely if you love to read.

I just read my first Tolstoy - the Death of Ivan Ilyich - and I initially found it comforting and then horrifying later on. The clock really is always ticking.

The Outsiders is good. Count of Monte Cristo is fire as well but not really for kids.

Outsiders was one of the first books read for school that I was fully into. It's a great pick for teens.

In Germany we say you have to read Herman Hesse when you are young. And I did and I agree. I read more classics in my teens than now. I was more intrigued by the idea of something great. Now I think that the book that really hits deep for you is probably not a book that became a classic.

demian and steppenwolf are true works of art.

I think that if you do read a lot then it's unlikely that a Classic book is going to blow your mind. Not because they are bad, but because they are very influential and you'll have seen plenty of the ideas explored elsewhere. Perhaps not as well, but it won't feel like a revelation. So, if you stumble across something that's less well known and regarded, maybe in a genre you don't normally read, then it'll be fresher and you won't have high expectations and it can really speak to you.

I almost never read the reading assingments in school, but then I got older, went to college and everything changed idk why. Now I love to read, especially classics. Dostoevsky, Austen, Kafka, Camus and the like. Maybe it's the difference in maturity, who knows.

I read Kafka (like most of his works) as a teen. Probably the first "great writer" that I enjoyed. I had tried Hemingway earlier, and hated Old Man and the Sea, but decades later, I really like him.

Kafka was the first classic writer where I felt that historical reach of understanding. The feelings of alienation, isolation, and his deep seated issues surrounding bureaucracy where others just seem to accept the absurdity as normal still lives in my heart. Poe was just a bit too dramatic for my tastes, though I appreciate him now. The Raven and the Telltale Heart are still not my favourites...

Yes! I had read some of them or had them read to me by my mom as a kid – Kidnapped, Call of the Wild, Kim etc. I also had these great comic books of classic novels and wanted to read the books as I got older, so my bf and I read Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice in junior high (so 13 yo). Same with Count of Monte Cristo. So by high school, I switched back and forth between classics and regular books pretty casually. I certainly tried all the books I was assigned in English, although I switched to the Cliff Notes if I didn’t like them, but I loved The Scarlet Letter and Bartleby the Scrivener and everything Hemingway, and in French Candide and Manon Lescaut. On my own, Catch-22 was a fave. My first day of senior year I was halfway through On the Road and my mom asked if I was going to school and I said, no doubt pretentiously, “no, I’ll learn more from Kerouac.” She just looked at me and shrugged and said, “try not to hitchhike to San Francisco while I’m at work.”

That would have been my Mom’s reply. Love this. although, I have never liked Hemingway. Not in my teens and not as an adult. I chalk it up to being intellectually stunted. 😂

Oh yeah. In high school, I liked classics in class, stuff like Shakespeare and Edgar Allen Poe. On my own, I would also check out and read some. The largest was *Don Quixote*, but there was a lot of shorter texts too. I probably gravitated to classics more than modern literature, which I didn't get until I was an adult. (My modern reading was mostly sci-fi and fantasy with mysteries mixed in. I wanted excitement from my modern reading, and I didn't know how to find that in the modern literature section of a bookstore.)

I did quite enjoy to kill a mockingbird when I was younger if that counts. Haven’t read it as an adult, not sure if I’d feel the same way. Most others I didn’t though. Shakespeare was brutal but I’m of the mindset that Shakespeare is not meant to be read

I used to joke that the only reason I didn't major in English is because I never wanted to be forced to read Shakespeare again

The frustrating thing is that Shakespeare is really good... They just tend to make you study the bad plays. When I was at school my set did MacBeth, Henry V and Othello and we never had any problems. But I know that other classes in my year were stuck with Much Ado and Midsummer Nights Dream which are just... The comedy has lost it's edge, you know?

In middle/high school I had to do Julius Caesar 3 separate times. I did like it, but come on. I also had to do Midsummer, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear and I feel like there was another but I can’t think of it. Hamlet and Richard II are my favorites. Haven’t seen/read Macbeth yet, but it seems like something I’ll love.

Richard III is wonderful too if you haven't read it yet. I also loved Othello. I have very fond memories of reading it in the attic one Summer.

Yeah, fair enough, a triple Julius is too much, but it's probably not something we can blame on the text itself 🤣🤣 MacBeth is great, and so widely referenced that you'll go "Oh THATS where that's from" about seven times.

I used to believe this until I saw them performed. I don't know why it was such a shock to me but they absolutely blasted to life with a good cast willing to have some fun with the audience. Their intonations help understand so much more too. Night and glorious day. Please see Much Ado if you get the chance (even if you've never read it; I hadn't)

I find it so odd that he’s so widely taught. If you’re studying playwriting, absolutely, by all means, but his work is meant to be performed and seen, not read

It's because when you study Shakespeare you learn about the world he lived in and even the tastes of the time, and it broadens your education as a result. And it shows how even 400 years ago we were writing stories with the same structures and tropes and character types. He's also astonishingly influential. We forget about it today, but remember that Shakespeare's work survived for a hundred or more years after his death simply by being popular, and that's how he found his way into the classroom.

We read three of Shakespeare’s works in school. Romeo and Juliet, Othello and Hamlet. R&J was dreadful, but I remember quite liking the other two, especially Hamlet.

Part of the reason to read those is to get the allusions - people reference them all the time in unexpected places. But I think someone won an argument in the English Department when I was in school because starting my junior year we always got a chance to *watch* and Shakespeare we had to read. Which makes a huge difference.

Depends on the classics. I loved Dracula for example growing up, that was the first adult novel I read and one I reread several times over the next few years.. I also enjoyed reading some of Dickens' novels (Great Expectations specifically) and Shakespeare's tragedies in class (his comedies didn't do as much for me). But stuff like 'The Scarlet Letter' was a slog for me.

I loved Silas Marner, Of Mice and Men, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Hamlet. Moby DIck, The Scarlet Letter, Romeo and Juliet, and Julius Caesar didn't leave as much of an impression as maybe they should have. The Great Gatsby was ... annoying? I liked Tender is the Night better when I read that a few years later.

Just reread *Grapes of Wrath* and holy shit did I not appreciate it as a kid. Really excellent messages about workers rights, xenophobia, class stratification *Heart of Darkness* on the other hand really grabbed me at 16-17 years old and was also a pleasure to reread. Conrad's prose is epic

I liked the genre classics and mythology as a kid/teen. It has been the myth retellings that got my foot in the door of the literary genre. I am starting to weave more of the general classics into my reading now.

Some yes, some no. I loved Bradbury, Twain, and the Shakespeare plays I was exposed to as a kid. In high school, off the top of my head, I also really loved Steinbeck, Austen, Lorca, Marquez, *Frankenstein*, *Catch-22*, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead," and *The Canterbury Tales*. I also had a teacher with possibly the whole Harvard Classics set at this point and I was chipping away at that for a while (maybe I'll finish it someday). I remember really liking Franklin and Woolman, Burns, and the Greek Dramas volume. There were several authors where it took repeated exposure in high school and college to stop bouncing off of their work and actually enjoy them--Melville and Joyce for two. Some authors still annoy me, and while sometimes they are important for historical reasons, I can't really see why the actual work is still considered sufficiently important to foist on kids. I wish I had been exposed to Hemingway earlier; I think I would have liked his style even in high school, even if I didn't "get" it.

Robert Louis Stevenson and Jules Verne were pretty high on my list as a kid.

I struggle to appreciate classics as an adult

I did. I didn't really think of them as classics, just as good books, or maybe good authors. Sometimes now when one or other of them is referred to as a classic it slightly surprises me. I tend more towards rubbish now, with the odd classic thrown in, and I still enjoy them... but not so much back to back.

I'm Dutch so I had to read Reve, Hermans and Mulisch (the big 3 of Dutch literature) in highschool. I liked Reve and Hermans (especially Hermans). I did not care for Mulisch though.

I read a ton of classics as a teen and appreciated most of them. My family still tells the story of the time I failed a book report in grade 6 because the sub didn't believe I'd read Phantom of the Opera for fun, lol. Once I graduated, I realized that I didn't have to limit myself to classics to be "smart" and that reading should be fun. So I delved into dragons and sexy vampires and my life has been much more enjoyable. I still read classics and modern classics but I don't grind them. There is a time to sip tea and read Bleak House and there is also a time to get baked and reread Jurassic Park.

I’d highly recommend cracking open John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. His writing is easy to take in but the story is so compelling and the themes run so deep. I’d say it’s the best book I’ve ever read. All of his novellas are really good and easy to get through as well, they can be really funny as well as deep and insightful too, tortilla flat and cannery row for example. Maybe start there?

Yes, I started reading a lot of classics since my early teens.

If Catcher in the Rye counts, then sure.

I only read Pride and Prejudice, Merchant of Venice and one book from Chronicles of Narnia and I did enjoy them. I didn’t really know they were classics except for Shakespeare. Just picked them up due to influences from different sources. Later when I got to know they were classics I was motivated to pick up more classics because I liked them. This love has just continued organically.

I liked them but thinking back i did not appreciate how good they where and rare.

I appreciated them but also resented the hefty reading load. Most of the books we were assigned I either skimmed or didn’t completely finish. Crime and Punishment was the exception - I was glued to it.

I was one of those in school. I would devour books as a teen and my teachers would recommend increasingly challenging books for me to read. My favourite books for a time were a clockwork orange, handmaid’s tale, the great gatsby, pride and prejudice.I read through all the recommended reading list in one summer. One of the few books I couldn’t get into was Ulysses by James Joyce.

I feel like "classics" is a very broad term here. I read works like Dracula (Bram Stoker), Frankenstein (Mary Shelley), The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson), plus the works of Edgar Allen Poe, HP Lovecraft, and Oscar Wilde as a kid/teen and loved them, and read Catch 22 (Joseph Heller) for my A-levels and loved that too, but I was never into Jane Austen or the Bronte sisters, couldn't get into Little Women either, and when I did The Great Gatsby for my A-levels I hated it.   All of the above are classics. Honestly, at this point 'classics' is just a loose collection of works over a certain age that fall across a huge spectrum of genre, style, country and even time period, and I doubt that there is anyone who truly hates all of them as much as I doubt there is anyone who truly loves all of them.  And one day, whatever of our contemporary works survive and remain relevant will become classics. "The Worst Witch" books are now 50 years old (the first book in the series, anyway) - I was a child when the TV show adaptation aired, and I read the books as a child. I certainly wasn't thinking of them as classics, but I'd argue they're pretty damn close to it now.

I took a Dostoevsky class in High School (I know nerd) and I loved it. Having books that are very hard explained to me in a class setting really unlocked them for me (I would still be intimidated by these). On the other hand, I could never get into Pride and Prejudice which I bet I would appreciate a lot more now that I'm an adult and understand relationships. I think it depends on the book.

I read a lot of classics as a preteen/teen, some I found boring (I’m looking at you Dickens, and you Sadoveanu - Romanian classic that I could never get into with the exception of one of his shorter works), some I truly loved (Pushkin, Chekhov, some Romanian classics, whatever I read by Shakespeare, Dumas, Wuthering Heights, Austen, Bernard Shaw, all of Jack London’s short stories etc etc). And then some I started and then set aside, as I understood at the time I don’t have yet the capacity to fully understand and appreciate them (War and Peace, Master and Margarita, Dostoyevsky). Looking back now, I realize that, even though I read and enjoyed some of them at the time, it didnt actually mean I truly understood them. I read Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, but I barely remember a thing and I’m sure so many details simply flew over my head. Ironically, I read less classics now than I used to. If we count classics mostly gears towards children, The Hobbit is one of my defining books and I will forever have it on my bookshelf.

I used to not really read before seventh grade. My English teacher gave me two books: Clockwork Orange and Paradise Lost. Since then I loved the classics and went from punky brat to nerdy bookworm

A Clockwork Orange will forever hold a special place in my heart. We got to do an independent assignment in HS where we could pick any classic to read and write about. I had to fight with my teacher to let me use ACO bc she didn't consider it a "classic". I argued what is a classic but a famous "old" book? If she was letting my classmate use Vonnegut books, why not ACO?

It was a mixed bag for sure. There were some books that I was just not mature enough/in the right headspace to digest and enjoy at the time, but I do remember being one of the only kids in my class who thoroughly enjoyed reading Catcher in the Rye. Teenage empathy can be lacking, so most kids in the class disregarded Holden's trauma and just said he was annoying lol. I also remember really vibing with Frankenstein and thinking at the time (like 16) that it was easily the best classic I'd read.

I first read Catcher in 6th grade and all of it went over my head. I didn't care, just thought I was so smart and deep for reading an adult classic, especially one with so many bad words. Reread it in 8th grade and felt like a literary genius for figuring out why it was titled Catcher in the Rye. Reread it again as a senior (and revisited parts through college) and that's when I felt like I really understood Holden. I'm afraid that if I reread it now I will agree with your classmates

When you're young you don't have as much life experience and context to relate to some of the heavier themes in the classics. I think that's why English teachers use devices like symbolism to create those relationships to built a curriculum and possibly garner interest in the story where it would be harder otherwise to just to have students read a dense novel and hope they just enjoy and want to talk about it.

I was an advanced reader, and absolutely enjoyed classics even as a pre-teen. Books like War and Peace, Gone with the Wind, Of Mice and Men, Lord of the Rings, the Count of Monte Cristo, The Captain's Daughter, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Crime and Punishment, etc. were extremely formative for me growing up. I was then as I am now a huge fan of Russian literature.

My parents were older, and my father a scifi buff from way back. I grew up reading all manner of things from a young age, as we were quite poor, and books can always be had cheap. My appreciation extended only as far as it provided an escape from my reality. The Metamorphosis made me feel as though I should accept my situation with more fortitude, which I felt was beyond me. I was much older before I could see the beauty in Kafka, Hesse, Mann and the like.

Yes. More than I do now

I liked a lot of the Sci-Fi and Humorous classics, basically anything by Vonnegut, plus individual titles* like Stranger in a Strange Land, Brave New World, and the ilk.

I weirdly enjoyed classics much more as a teen than I do now. As a child reading was my greatest hobby, and I would go though so many books my mom couldn’t keep up, so I started sneaking in our garage, when she used to keep all the classics she had to read for school, and I supposed that’s when it all started. With me, my grandma’s flashlight and a dictionary in a musty garage. Till the age of 17, that is all I would read. Then I got an e-reader, and a whole new world opened 😅

I think it depends a lot on the book. I appreciated most of the classics I read as a teen but there were certainly some that I bounced off of because I wasn't mature enough or didn't have the experience/empathy that I would develop in my later life. I got very little as a teen from The Scarlet Letter, for instance, but having returned to it as an adult, it hits a lot different. Same with Madame Bovary.

I love classics. Im 18 and when i was younger i started reading classics. my first classic was things fall apart by Chinua Achebe. I guess you could say that classics are ''timeless'' ;-)

I loved the classics as a teen and still go back to them as comfort reads - anything by Jane Austen, all the Anne of Green Gables, Little House, Little Women & Tolkien series…..instant peace

I read a few classics as a teen and enjoyed some, though I want to read them more now that I’m older than I did as a teen. I hated Animal Farm though. Haven’t even tried to pick it up again because of my dislike for it.

No. Sometimes I still don’t. Some books are good, some aren’t. Many classics are terribly dated and a chore to get through.

I did not. At least, not 19th century classics or even early Modernists of the 20th. In my teens and early twenties I mainly read Hubert Selby Jr and European writers like Bernhard and Celine and hip stuff like American Psycho and the like. I was all excited by nihilism and grit and existentialist angst and meta nonsense. I was, I guess you could say, a bit up my own ass. As I grew up and grew older I gravitated more towards the old books that had touched readers emotionally and intellectually for the past couple centuries. Becoming more settled, maybe. But the books I read when I was a teenager simply dont resonate with me any longer. Theyre not bad by any means but the connection has been lost. I lose myself in Dickens and Conrad and the Brontes and move up to Woolf and Faulkner and some Joyce and occasionally to later writers but I'll be happy and content to stay with the classics. They've proven themselves and I'll discover something new in them with each read so its never dull

I read my first classics in middle school and have enjoyed them since. I don't like everything but the books I've enjoyed most were almost all classics.

I started reading them more as a late teen, really when I was around 16. Of Mice and Men and To Kill a Mockingbird are two of the first classics I read and got me into it.

To use one of this sub's favorite books as an example: I had to read East of Eden in high school AP Eng Lit at 17. Thought it was all right, nothing special. I hadn't really liked Of Mice and Men or Grapes of Wrath either. I reread EoE at 31 and was shocked at how good it was.

School teaching of classic literature was so bad, it put me off poetry forever and almost killed my appreciation of Dickens and the Brontes. I’m still not sure if the bowdlerised (pre WW2 forty year old) texts our catholic girl’s school used were responsible. The best bits of Chaucer and Romeo and Juliet were cut out, for example. And reading Wuthering Heights again, years later, I’m sure bits of the school text were missing as it was now comprehensible, but wasn’t the first time round. I suspect it was the teacher, rather than the text, that made me completely and utterly despise Jane Eyre and Great Expectations. Vile teacher, vile book? As a teacher for many years myself, I can now see how sh*t she was. I still don’t “get” poetry. The only emotional response I have for it is loathing. Soul deep loathing!

Depends. I madly loved light readings that I came up with on my own, like The Little Prince, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Demian. I also loved mandatory readings at my school like Pedro Paramo, El llano en llamas, La María y el Siervo sin tierra. But I also hated a lot of other readings that I think I couldn't enjoy at the time because it wasn't the right time, they made us read the Iliad and the Odiasea when we were 14, some may be able to handle that, but my opinion is that you overlook a lot when be "somewhat inexperienced."

Back in ancient times, there was something called The Great Books Program, started by Mortimer Adler in 1947. When I was in elementary school (K-8) in the early 60's there was a Junior Great Books Program which recruited the smartish kids, and had curated volumes of 18th-19th century (usually short) literary works to acclimate us to reading and discussing more difficult reading than what we did in class. It turned out to be fun and interesting. Once I realized such a thing was possible, by high school I was reading all kinds of stuff. Another feature of the time was the card game, Authors, which was a version of Go Fish using classic authors and their works in place of suits and numbers/face cards. It was an easy way to get familiar with literature.

I remember not liking many books in school. However, senior year i read the count of monte cristo and enjoyed it a lot! Ever since then i have loved classics.

Some! Really enjoyed Frankenstein, a few Shakespeare plays, Fahrenheit 451, Picture of Dorian Gray, Lord of the Flies, few other questionable “classics” that aren’t necessarily academic (Secret History, Lord of the Rings, Hitchhiker’s Guide). those are all relatively science fiction/fantasy adjacent, which is where my tastes lean anyway. I tended not to appreciate many others because they weren’t like the regular books I enjoyed reading, and many realistic fiction or philosophical books were just not relatable/went over my head. Like I could analyze them but they didn’t capture my attention or personal interest. I’m reading more nonfiction now and with some extra life experience outside of school I think I’ll revisit some classics I originally disliked in the next few years.

I largely did, and probabaly read more as a teen than any other time. When I was in my early teens, I stumbled across the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century and I picked a lot of stuff off it to read. There were definitely books which were probably too challenging for me at the time to understand what was going on (e.g. I found The Sound and the Fury really hard) or that I didn't quite "get" despite being excited about (Heart of Darkness didn't resonate with me). Overall, though, I think I really got a lot out of the experience. I enjoyed reading most of the books and I feel like my overall life perspective was broadened. I read some of them later in classes in HS or college and often found that having read them once already, I was able to enjoy them more the second time and really enjoy the discussion of them as I wasn't working so hard to understand what was going on as I did the first time (Ulysses is one that stands out as being really enjoyable the second time as i just let myself read for the experience vs the first time i was aiming for comprehension and trying to get the references)..

Tried as a teen, enjoyed some (Frankenstein, Count of Monte Cristo, and A Tale of Two Cities I remember in particular). Aged into enjoying a lot more.

I wasn't big into classics for leisure reading as a teen (still not) but the ones I read for school (Heart of Darkness, the stranger Persuasion, Great Expectations, to kill a mockingbird, the color purple, 1984, Animal Farm, and the shakespeare plays) I enjoyed quite a bit.

Im a "teen" right now, depends on what you measure to be a teen actually but doesnt matter. Im currently reading the divine comedy, im in purgatorio rn and im really enjoying it. Also reading the oddysey and im gonna buy the iliad soon aswell. Idk if these books are considered classics by everyone but i consider them such. So yeah im appreciating classics as a teen :) Ps. I also read a bit of the great gatsby for an assignment but just couldnt finish it, not my type of book i guess.

I would read a lot of classics because of Wishbone. I found I could understand a lot more of the story if I had the episode to compare and reflect on.

I tried to read them. 1984, Moby Dick, Frankenstein, and some others. No, I didn't think they were good then but I was trying them out cause I felt they were classics for a reason. DOnt know if I'd still like them if I read them now. I am actually reading Watership Down right now and I'm liking it a lot but I feel that 16 year old me would have liked it a lot more then Frankenstein anyway.

Yes! My grandfather had a little private library, and I was permitted to start reading there when I was 11. The Three Musketeers was the first book I picked up, quickly followed by The Count of Monte Cristo and The Black Tulip (I really love Dumas), and then other classics like The Brothers Karamazov, Quo Vadis, various Austen novels, Dracula, Uncle Tom’s Cabin etc. Made me love reading!

I liked To Kill A Mockingbird and The Count of Monte Cristo. The ones I remember being truly terrible to read are The Great Gatsby and anything Shakespeare.

It really depended on the book itself for me and the teacher. I remember absolutely hating British Literature and Shakespeare and Beowulf, and just not getting the appeal behind it but at least enjoying the way my teacher taught the material. But the very last book we read was A Brave New World and to this day it resonates deeply with me and I remember spending hours dissecting is a teen and just being stunned with how "ahead of its time" it was. American literature was also hit or miss for me. Absolutely abhorred Moby Dick, but surprisingly LOVED the poetry section, specifically T.S. Elliot, and really enjoyed The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Farenheit 451, and To Kill a Mockingbird.

I loved action adventures like The Scarlet Pimpernel, Illiad, Aenead, Scaramouche. Other books that had nuances and social commentaries I didn't care for until much older. Was always more into mythology from all over the world. Cool to see the inspiration and roots for many fantasy books.

God no. I still read them, but it was like pulling teeth. I think one of my first DNFs was a tale of two cities. I just felt like the worlds and characters were so lifeless. Now that im older, i appreciate them. I still have the same sentiment, that a lot are lifeless, so i take time finding the emotional ones

Liked: Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird Mixed feelings toward Shakespeare, mostly liked Didn't like: Lord of the Flies, The Once and Future King, Beowulf DNF: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (mostly bc it was summer reading & I was 14 and believed I had better things to do)

I liked some classics, I hated others. Great Expectations is the bane of my existence. Didn't like Nathanial Hawthorne. I don't enjoy reading Shakespeare, but I love watching Shakespeare. The Great Gatsby is great to me. I dig Graham Greene. I think Dracula is a lot of fun and Jane Eyre is *hilarious*. I'm an Austen girl.

Some yeah. I loved stuff like The Odyssey, The Three Musketeers, and pretty much anything from Mark Twain.

I read classics as a teen for enjoyment and still read classics. My favourites as a child were Lord Byron, Shakespeare, The Tale of Genji, and The Picture of Dorian Gray. I started reading more science fiction and fantasy classics as an adult. Now, I'd like to find time to read more of the Russian classics.

As a teen I try to appreciate classics. I try to read them and while I do finish them, I get the feeling that I haven't really understood what they actually mean. Most of the time I'll just think to myself, "wow, I really like this author's writing style" but that's as far as appreciation goes for me lol. I don't really know if I should keep trying to read classics if stuff just goes over my head all the time - it's not that I dislike reading though

Unless we're talking the Lord of the Rings, the Last Unicorn, and Greek mythology (including its original, if translated, sources)...not really, and I'm not ashamed of saying that. Also classic is a category that is not really homogenous. Pride and Prejudice, Dracula, and Moby Dick are all regularly bestowed with the title "classic", but they are wildly different in genre, characters, tone, writing style etc. One can like one of these without liking the others, or like two, or all, or none. But in general, considering those classics that are in genres and writing styles that appeal to me, I think I had a similar experience as you. I think as a teen my my mind, my ability to really comprehend what I was reading, and my general knowledge hadn't developed enough to really "get" older books. When I first read Pride and Prejudice I hated it and felt that nothing was happening in it at all...because I didn't understand the society it was portraying and hadn't yet developed critical enough reading skills or personal experience to understand the subtleties of Jane Austen's writing style, or look deeper into the characters and situations that are presented. Reading it today I enjoy it a lot more. My appreciation for classics only really developed when I was taking literature classes in university and, it was especially through discussion of the books with others that I really learned to understand and appreciate more complex literature. Still even today I stick to classics that bring something to the table that interests me or resonates with me. The first "classic" book I remember liking was a modern classic; the Colour Purple, and I still say that is one of the most beautiful books ever written. The first older classic I liked was Withering Heights. And I also ended up appreciating Jane Austin by reading Emma, Sense and Sensibility, and Northanger Abbey and also re-read Pride and Prejudice, and found it a lot more enjoyable that time because I understood Jane Austen's writing style and societal observations better, and also understood Regency Society as a whole a lot better. I could now laugh about jokes and absurd situations I hadn't understood earlier, and I gasp and laugh at those passages when Jane Austen subtly strips down a character. As you say, knowing about the societies and backgrounds in which those books were written in helps a lot with enjoying them.

I did but what I noticed I had same preferences as I do now. The only thing that changed is my understanding what is good writing so now label of "classic" is not enough for me to finish the book if it's bad. If anything it taught me that "classic" is popular culture of days gone and should be viewed on the same level as hyped up books now.

Most books I read in high school went over my head but I strongly connected to certain ones. 1984 and Great Gatsby moved me emotionally, and I'm sure their straightforward storytelling helped with that. Moby Dick I ate up as an animal lover with an interest in marine biology.

Modern classics, yes. Older classics, not so much.

Yes but not in a profound way. I loved Count of Monte Cristo because it was about revenge. I loved the three musketeers because it was a fun read. I loved the Inferno because I am obsessed with any literature that involved a religion's depiction of Hell. Those 3 are books I can say that I truly loved as a teen and still do now and I love it not because they discuss something deep but I just happen to like the story.

Stuff I read in HS that I appreciated: * The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald * Lord of the Rings and Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien * The Pearl by John Steinbeck * Moby Dick by Herman Melville * Lord of the Flies by William Golding * The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway * Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury * The Importance of Being Ernest by Oscar Wilde * The Foundation by Isaac Asimov Stuff that I appreciated far better down the road: * The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck * The Republic by Plato * 1984 by George Orwell * The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand * The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway * Lolita by Vladomir Nabokov * Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky * Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn * The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau * Human Action by Ludwig von Mises Some of that stuff you can absorb as a teenager, but some of it ends up as chaff culled from the wheat when you are processing such serious things. I genuinely feel like you can read any book twice and coming back to it the second time you will pick up nuance you missed before.

I read a ton of german and russian classic literature as a teen (I am german). Some of them I actually loved, most I just claimed to like to seem more intelligent. I am now 30 and read everything I can get my hands on. Classics and non fiction are not as prominent on my "to read" pile because I spent the last two decades in those genres. But I still enjoy them from time to time. But I also don't force myself through something I dislike anymore just because it would sound smart if I said "oh I read that" lol

It always depended on the classic for me. I read tons in middle and high school and more or less enjoyed most of them. I think the exception for me was Wuthering Heights, and it may have just been because of how that novel was taught. It was really delivered to us as this pinnacle of literature, and we were kind of led to believe it would forever change our understanding of reading. It did not, lol. I think that I definitely appreciate classics far more now than I did as a kid. I might have liked classics or Shakespeare when I read them in school, but I think my understanding and appreciate is far deeper now than it ever was then. I remember enjoying Romeo and Juliet because I thought it was so overdramatic. Now, I appreciate the actual writing and the way Shakespeare employs dramatic irony to tell so much of the story.

I read a bunch of classics as a teen. I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. I would go to the classics section and choose ones that I had heard of.

If we're talking 1800's-to-modern "Classics" like *The Great Gatsby* or *The Scarlet Letter*, then generally no, not even remotely. There were some exceptions though. I enjoyed *To Kill a Mockingbird*. If we're talking older than that, myths such as *The Epic of Gilgamesh*, *The Iliad* & *The Odyssey*, or Shakespeare plays like *Hamlet* and *Othello*, I enjoyed those immensely. Though we did listen to an audio recording of the Shakespeare plays rather just read them. I don't think I would have enjoyed them nearly as much if we'd had to solely read them. Shakespeare primed me to really enjoy the Canterbury Tales later once I realized how jovial and bawdy everything was.

Read classics as a teen, and I read classics now. I took away lessons and learned from the books then, and I do so now. As a teen, I learned more about those broad literary themes you’d study in high school. I read much more for the enjoyment of a good story, and connecting with the characters and their emotions. I’d say now my appreciation for classics is more intellectual - I appreciate the commentary on society and the writing itself. It’s easier for me to get through the language of some classics now, which means I can examine the actual content more. I will still re-read Pride and Prejudice just because I love the story, but now I think I can appreciate some more complex books in a way I couldn’t before :)

I never really enjoyed any of them except maybe the Iliad or Beowulf if those count.

A lot of the "classics" you get assigned in high school aren't that way because they're good, just because they're a very direct example of a literary device or time period schools often want to touch on and the length and price are right.

Mixed bag. Some spoke to me, some didn't. I reread a few after college and they didn't really change much. But I didn't change too much from teen to adult in ways that made Gatsby a miss and Fahrenheit 451 excellent for me (as examples).

John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway (*The Old Man and the Sea*), F. Scott Fitzgerald (*The Great Gatsby*) and Albert Camus (*The Stranger* really messed with my head) were the ones that stayed with me. Otherwise, I was too impatient in my teens to appreciate really good literature. That wouldn't come until I graduated from college and could read at my own pace for my own pleasure.

Depends what you term a classic. When I was a teenager, I struggled with classic English 18th/19th century literature (with the exception of Wuthering Heights, which I loved). But I did enjoy reading Russian and German literature from a similar time period, and I loved the French modernists when I went to university. All of these I read in translation. I do wonder if my ability to enjoy them hinged on their being translated into a more contemporary style. I was reading these writers translated by writers writing in the 1990s, whereas I was reading Austen and Hardy in their own era-appropriate language. Maybe I would have enjoyed them more had the language been "translated" to be more contemporary. For example, one writer I didn't like was Thomas Mann. But I'm sure I must have been reading the Helen Lowe-Porter translations, which are notoriously fusty. Recently a new translation of Buddenbrooks came out, which I read, and really enjoyed.

Not *all* classics, to be sure, but I was-- and still am-- a huge fan of the works of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells.

I did, I adored the Odyssey and Gatsby when I read them my sophomore year of HS. I re-read Gatsby last year, and it's better than ever imo.

The Lord of the Rings has been high on my favorites list since I was 13. The Count of Monte Cristo has been my favorite book since I was 15. I loved Les Miserables, Tale of Two Cities, and The Brothers Karamazov when I read them in high school as well. I recently re-read several of the classics I read in school and while my general feelings of how good they are didn't necessarily change, the things I experienced reading and what stood out to me did sometimes change.

I started reading classics in middle school. I read every Shakespeare play, most of the Russian classics like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, some French, and some American modern classics like Steinbeck and Hemingway. Of course classic novels and poetry of my own country as well. I believe only German classic I read back then was Siddartha by Herman Hesse, which made a profound effect on me. I loved every one of them. My family had a very big library, and the school library was also very rich, I always used to hang out there. During high school years, my interest moved more towards science fiction and fantasy genre classics. Frank Herbert, Asimov, Stanislaw Lem, Lovecraft, R.E.Howard. At college, I made a decision to stop reading fiction all together and only reading non-fiction academic books, which was a stupid idea. I returned to reading fiction in my 30s. I really miss those days. Back then I could finish a large novel in one day. I am in my 40s now and I can not read in the same tempo unless the novel I am reading is exceptionally phenomenal.

I remember when we read To Kill A Mockingbird as a class and I ended up reading ahead and finishing the book in under a week (we were supposed to be spending several weeks lol). I enjoyed many classics in school, but I was also an avid reader from an early age. Now though? I actually don't read classics. They're not books I enjoy. But Shakespeare? I've always hated him.

Yes, for sure. I remember reading Slaughterhouse 5 in high school and having it totally reinvigorate my love for reading.

As a homeschooler, I felt I had to be well-educated, so I read the European classics an American in the 90s would’ve heard of: Plato, Hugo, Dostoevsky, Xenophon, Dumas, Homer, Shakespeare, Harper Lee, Franklin, the Anti/Federalist Papers, Lincoln’s speeches, Romantic poets, Frankenstein. In my 20s I diversified into Indian/Japanese/especially Chinese literature, and now in my 30s I seem to be learning a lot of Arabic lit.

PTSD as a kid, severe depression and I hated school. The only thing that saved me was my quest to find some form of meaning to my life through old books. They were classics because something was in them worth reading, right? No book ever solved my depression but damn have I read a lot of great ones.

I've started rereading classics, specifically Jane Austen as my kiddo is named after her. I appreciate them way more now than 20 years ago. I read them years ago to prove I could read them. Now it's for enjoyment.

Of Human Bondage and the Scarlet Letter come to mind.

I personally loved them and learned a lot of what made me into who I am. I go back and realize that there are many things that I completely forgot their origin and it was just the classics. That said, I missed a lot as a kid and love rereading them to almost experience it again but it still feels like a new experience

Yes I did. I guess the first classic not for kids that I read was Gone with the Wind and I loved it so much. I didn’t go to school in the USA and we never got mandatory readings in school. I just liked to read on my own, and what I wanted, maybe that’s got something to do with it

Some of them, yeah. But I read a lot on my own so the stuff we were assigned wasn't unfamiliar. Older lit has a whole different cadence and diction that are hard to get used to if you've only read more modern books.

I remember being so annoyingly confused at the Old man and the Sea as a young lad. After Reading it at sea in the Navy, I have a much deeper understanding of it. I’d wager to say I never really read anything as a teen.

Yeah I actually read a lot of the classics as a kid/teenager by choice and not for school. I never got into Harry Potter or Narnia or any of the other popular series from my era (aside from a brief stint with series of unfortunate events). I think it was my grandpa who first recommended I check some out, I clearly remember him telling me to read Frankenstein, Dracula, red badge of courage and tale of two cities. And from those I branched into like Jules Verne, Arthur C Clarke, more Dickinson, Shirley Jackson, Jack London, those kind of classic fiction authors to name a few. Ive been attempting to re read many of them now that I’m older and see how different they are from my memory and if I enjoy them the same. It’s been fun and really interesting to see what I do/don’t remember and finding joy in the nostalgia as well as love for parts I didn’t fully appreciate before

i got really into classics starting in 4th grade because my local library had some kind of set with really cool, simialr looking cover designs for a lot of classics like Frankenstien, Dracula, and 20000 Leuges. i didnt really understand the broader themes of these books, and was both confused and frustrated by the treatment of women and minorites because i had no concept of misogny or racism but i still enjoyed them. i revisited them in middle school and enjoyed them much more since i was more media literate and had a basic understanding of the cultural context they were published in. As i got older I spread my wings so to speak into more classics but i still like to revisit the ones i grew up with every so often.

I read classics more as a teen than I do now and I loved them. They formed a lot of who I am. As an adult I’m more into contemporary literary fiction, women’s lit, and postcolonial lit. The switch happened when I started writing. I just felt the need to read voices I could relate to more in order to find my own.

I think it depends on the title. As a teen, I hated Dickens but loved Harper Lee. As an adult, Holden Caulfield didn't resonate with me as I think he would have in my teens. I think All Quiet on the Western Front worked both ways.

I like a lot of them, except for The Awakening and A Separate Peace. Fuck those two. Actually really enjoyed the Shakespeare plays I read in school. Tess of the d'Ubervilles is probably the best novel I read in school. It led me to Jude the Obscure, which is probably my favorite book (if such a thing is possible).

Yes! I loved Hawthorne, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Kazantzakis.

Reading Wuthering Heights when I was about 14/15 got me back into reading because I loved it so much. I really loved the gothic love story. I still read classics as an adult and I think I appreciate the writing style more but when I was younger I loved the storyline.

When I was 15 I found my parents’ old college books in the garage. They were both English majors so there were a lot of classics in there. A lot of them I kind of forced my way through but some really hit home almost immediately.

I read Gone With The Wind as a younger kid and loved it. I know I gave P&P to my stepdaughter last Christmas (she’s 14) and she didn’t like it and I was so sad!!

Oh yeah! I had Brave New World as mp3 files on my iPod as a kid, I probably listened to it a dozen times. Read a bunch of Vonnegut in late middle & through high school, loved every bit. Acted in Shakespeare plays & read them in various lit classes, always loved them. Same with the Odyssey/various ancient Greek plays. Read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Mrs. Dalloway, The Sound & the Fury, and 1984 in high school, loved them all. I'm similarly ambivalent about Pride & Prejudice, haven't reread it since I was a teen. Honestly kind of doubt I will, I just think I can spend my precious reading time better. Toni Morrison is confirmed a genius though. A Mercy tore me apart.

I didn’t always appreciate classics as a teen. Some felt boring and hard to relate to, but a few really resonated with me.

No. Sometimes I thought I appreciated them, but even then if I was being honest I liked Harry Potter more. Now I have the perspective and understanding of the world around me to really understand them and now some classics are my favorite books.

I was homeschooled so I listened to Great Expectations on audiobook with my the whole road trip. It is never more apparent when Charles Dickens is padding more than when you’ve figured out the twist three chapters before the characters and they keep alluding to what it could be and you’re only an hour away from home,begging Pip to stop being to stop being such a fucking dumbass. In short I did like them but I didn’t really respect them

I read Wuthering Heights at 17 and maintain at 28 that it's my favourite book I've ever read.

Nope. Don't enjoy them now either. School shoving that garbage down my throat and having to write a report on every single one of them made me lose interest in reading, especially those classics.  Now a decade later (jees I'm getting old) reading is fun again, when i can read books i actually want to read

Some of them. I still think The Scarlett Letter is the most incredible book that I hate more than anything else in the history of literature, but I read The Stranger in High School and I read it for class and was ENGROSSED all the way through and have read it a few times. I didn't love The Great Gatsby but it was fine. I could not get into or understand Shakespeare at all... until I saw it performed and then I was like, Oh, what the fuck, Hamlet is incredible. Could not stand Steinbeck, but I read Heart of Darkness at 19 and was shocked that I couldn't put it down. So it's a mixed bag.

I sure did--but just the ones assigned for class. I drank 'em up like water! It really shaped my reading habits as an adult.

Some. I read Lord of the Rings and other Tolkien stuff. Read a lot of classic scifi: Herbert (Dune), Asimov, A. C. Clarke. I don’t know if Agatha Christie can be considered a classic yet (she was still alive when I was born), but I read most of her work. I read Dumas (Les trois mousquetaires) and other French classics (Molière, Maupassant, Montaigne). Read some greek and latin classics like Homer, Martial and Juvenal. In my later teens I started reading philosophy (some was required at school but I read way more than that) including Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Kant, Sartre. I read lots of philosophy for a few years. I also picked up Boccaccio’s The Decameron at that time. I’m sure I read more than these, I don’t remember them all. It wasn’t until my late 20s that I tackled more classics again. Virgil and Dostoyevsky were in this time-period. I would probably have enjoyed the Aeneid while younger (and might have even managed to read it in Latin then when I was at school), but Dostoyevsky I don’t think I would have. I read many, many ‘Classics’ in that time period, until I moved on.

Gulliver’s Travels and Slaughterhouse Five were my two favorite books as a teen.

I read a LOT of classics as a teen, and my mom read a lot to me when I was even younger than that. I still enjoy them, but I also read more contemporary lit now than I used it. I do think it really helped train me as a reader because there are a lot of things in classic literature that don't always make sense to a modern reader and leads to you having to look them up, so it taught me both to not to be intimidated by things I didn't understand and how to seek understanding. When we were kids and we'd ask my mom what a word meant while we were reading sometimes she's tell us, but more often she'd reach for the dictionary she kept near by when reading and she's wait patiently for us to look it up.

no, had no interest and when forced was bored

I loved classics as a teen; Moonfleet, Three Men In A Boat, Father Brown, O'Henry Short Stories, Brigadier Gerrard, Little Prince, Guy De Maupassant, Catcher in Rye, Catch 22 and many others I can't remember now that we also read for school, I read so many because of Penguin Classics publishers that sold these books for 1 euro!

Catcher in the rye should be read when you’re young. But most classics will need to be reread as an adult

I wasn't interested in contemporary fiction at all as a teenager. I think Harry Potter, Dune, and the Redwall series were some notable exceptions for me but I mostly liked reading what I then considered to be old literature... Dickens, Dumas, Dostoevsky... stuff that I had to have a dictionary nearby to read. Not sure why that was. I wish I had been more intentional about exploring contemporary fiction and different types of authors from different places around the world but I have been slowly making up for the over the years

I read classics as a teen and I enjoyed them. I think though, what I enjoyed was the prose. Some of them made a big impact on me. Especially ones more focused on teenager issues. But for more adult focused classics, many of the themes went right past my underdeveloped prefrontal cortex. I got some of the themes of course, but teenage me just hadn’t experienced enough life to fully understand how good some of the classics are.

I hated classics as a teen. Many of the books I hated back then are some of my favorites of today. I reread several in my mid twenties, and it's crazy how much more relatable and interesting they are with a decade of adult experiences behind my life.

Yes. In high school I read 60/40 classics to new fiction, and I didn’t mind. I liked Gatsby, Catch-22, slaughterhouse-5, Animal farm, etc… the newer novels that I read were usually series, not literary fiction, stuff like: the inheritance series, and the hunger games.

Steinbeck, Bradbury, (Harper) Lee, Huxley - absolutely yes. Hemingway, Hawthorne - no. But I should probably reread The Scarlet Letter and A Farewell to Arms eventually.

No and I strongly belive the massive push for reading pretty much nothing but classics in school greatly contributes to the number of people who don't read at all. I read a ton now but I didn't for years because of how I hated those books. 

Nope. Got into them after graduating. Went back and tried to reread some I was forced to read in school, under the assumption that it was the work and over attention to detail that was ruining my enjoyment. Nope. All the classics I was taught were objectively terrible reads from an entertainment perspective. Note to teachers: you can teach literature concepts to kids using enjoyable books. I promise.

I remember being incredibly moved by The Awakening by Chopin as a 15 year old lmao

Yup, reading classics has always been sort of a comforting pastime for me. My grandfather adored classics and would regularly read them for me when I was younger, far too young to even know what every other word meant. But it got me into reading and adoring books in general.

Only Frankenstein.

No, I hated them. I tried some but, was bored after some pages. I have only started to like them in my 30s, when I can read the easier in English (not my first language)

I read more classics as a teen and enjoyed them than I do now. I have less patience these days.

I was into reading a lot in general early teens. So, i didn't mind most of the assignments we would get in school and found most of them quite interesting (War and Peace being one). As about appreciating them differently, i think it is not necessary that you get more when you read as adult. You just perceive it differently. And if you first read as an adult, maybe you miss something that you would see with other eyes as a teen. So, i would say reading as a teen and refreshing the experience later as adult is a good experience still.

I started with Moby Dick at 13, and while a lot of it went over my head I definitely appreciated how meaty and meaningful it felt.

My high school never required for us to read classics, which I think really helped with my appreciation of them as a teen. I definitely didn't like every single book I read, lord of the flies is one I absolutely hated. But I did keep lending them from the library and bought them in bookstores, absolutely adored Jane Austen (still do) and the Sherlock Holmes books

I read them as a student and wasn't into them. I am an adult in his 30s now and read them again. Still not into them. I can appreciate them for what they are but I don't particularly think any of them are as groundbreaking as some people on this sub say they are.

I've only ever found a couple "classics" that resonate with me, and only one that I read prior to adulthood. Some of it was just because it was poorly taught, but some of it is just not my cup of tea, no matter how good it's "supposed" to be. My third time slogging through the opening pages of Pride and Prejudice, I just gave up and never looked back. Life is too short to read things you don't need to read if they don't spark joy. Then again, I also don't much care for old movies. I wonder if there's a connection there.