Gone and done it

Yes, I have gone and done it.  I have finished the Jane Austen canon, I have finally read Emma.  I am certain the book has not changed, so I suppose that means I have changed as a person/reader.  I once tried to read it and gave up in boredom, but I went back, persevered, actually enjoyed it splendidly, and have completed all extant Austenian works.  Strange that we can despise a work at one point in our lives only to turn around and love it at some point in the future.  I never read Anne of Green Gables as a girl as I thought it would be tedious and boring, but it is one of my favorite books!  Of course, there are books that are just awful, tedious, poorly written, or incomprehensible so there is certainly a place for taste in literary aspirations but it seems that some works are just more mature than we are at the moment we encounter them, much as I hated dark chocolate as a child but it is one of my favorite treats in my 'over the hill' years.  I wonder if I need to go back and look at some of those old 'classics' they forced us to read in school, in which I had little interest at the time.  Great Expectations I thought was terrible, but perhaps it deserves a second chance.  Treasure Island was unremarkable now and then.  I'll skip the anti-utopian novels thank you very much.  I will never be mature enough for Ulysses or perhaps that should be insane enough.  To think that there are so many books in the world to read, and some of them require a more refined reader than others.  I would have never thought there was a taste for books as one might have for wine, but it makes sense.  No wonder certain poor quality books become popular as do certain cheap vintages only to make true connoisseurs roll their eyes in disgust at the hideous taste of the masses.  Book snobs indeed!  We need more of them.