7 Books I Was Wrong About

book I was Ro I was I was wrong yes these are seven books that I was wrong about probably been wrong about a lot more but here are seven books that I admit my first impressions were the wrong [Music] one so a lot of times our attitudes change about books over time I think a lot of times we're in kind of a hurry to get our reviews out at least on good reads for me I always post a Goodreads review within a day or two of finishing a book often times my thoughts don't come until weeks later and even in sometimes those few weeks my rating may change and some of the thoughts on the books may change well these are seven books that my thoughts change dramatically through time now a couple of these are natural to happen because I read them as a and then reread them as an adult and my total attitude was changed but some of these just over a period of months or years or even just weeks with a couple of these my thoughts changed dramatically so here are seven books that I freely admit my first impression was the wrong one and I want to start with the book that really was the impetus for me wanting to do this video was a book I read two years ago and that is childhood's End by Arthur C Clark when I read childhood's end I think think I gave it three stars I liked it didn't love it didn't understand why it was this Monumental classic that people Rave about childhood's end is told in three parts and the first part is Humanity basically realizing that we're not alone in the universe some aliens contact us and say hey we're going to be there in 50 years clean up your act and we'll be there sec I'm doing this very simplistically the second act is where we finally meet the aliens and the third Act is kind of the aftermath of that and when I initially read this I really liked the first two acts a lot and then I think the words I used in my review was I didn't like the third act at all but that's changed because I don't think a week's gone by in the two years since I've read this that I haven't thought about this book specifically the third act now there was one aspect of the third act that I really loved non-spoiler reasons but to give you a hint if you've read it just basically the appearance of the aliens and what that meant I really love that side of it that was something that I did like in the third act but I didn't like where the story went but there's a single line in this third act that I can't stop thinking about and because of that line it's made me rethink everything about this book and especially made me rethink just my own reception about this book so childhood's end is probably a five-star read for me I understand the greatness of it and I think in my haste to kind of give my thoughts I didn't have to time to think about it I've come to learn through this book that kind of the more thought-provoking types of books especially in science fiction I need time to think about it and more time to digest so although this might not be a top 10 work of Science Fiction for me it's definitely a five-star read and I was definitely wrong about it the first time second book I want to talk about is a book that I've never heard anybody else talk about on book and that is Forever by Pete Hamill now I read this about 10 years ago and back then I didn't have a book Channel or anything like that and I had a good reads I don't know how much I used it but I would always write at the end of the year my top 10 books that I read in the year and I would put it on my Facebook and this made my top three one year despite earlier in that year me giving it only a fourstar rating so forever is a a really interesting book it's written by someone who's not a novelist it's written by Pete Hamill who is a New York City historian and he's crafted this story to BAS basically tell the story of New York City and in this story we get a 15th or 16th century Irishman who finds the keys to immortality but he has to stay on the island of Manhattan so we it's this ma Magical Tale of seeing just Manhattan grow up around him and it was one of those books that although the ending I felt a little rushed I really enjoyed it and throughout the year this was a book that much like childhood's end I just couldn't stop thinking about it so when I got to the end of that year several months after I read it it was no no longer a four-star read it was a five-star read and it was one of the best things that I read all year I don't know anybody that's read this so go check it out Forever by Pete Hamill great book he also wrote a great small little biography of Frank Sinatra that I love called why Sinatra matters anyway Forever by Pete Hamill is a book that I got wrong the first time now the next two were some works that I read as a youth one I just talked about recently in my classic fantasy video so I'm going to be kind of brief with that but when I was 12 years old I read The Chronicles of Narnia and didn't really like it part of it was a 12-year-old that was kind of precocious that wanted something more grownup which I discovered when the next book series I read was The Lord of the Rings however as an adult going in and knowing that these were children's books and just knowing that they were going to be less serious and more whim Whimsical I really enjoyed them you know they wouldn't crack the top 10 of my favorite book series ever but when I did my I did a tier list of my fantasy series and I put it in the mid tier and it's definitely better than that this is a good to Great book series it's whimsical it skews young my favorite one is the darkest one in the series of Magician's Nephew but it is one that as a youth I was wrong and as an adult I see that there's a lot of greatness in The Chronicles of Narnia so another one that I got wrong as a youth I read all of the work works not all of the works I read like four works of Terry Brooks the sord of shanara series then I remember reading the first one of the next series and at the time I Lov the swort of shinara and I didn't really like the other ones well about five or six years ago I reread the shanara trilogy and then I read the next series the heritage of shinara it's a tetrology and of those seven books without a doubt the best of all of those books is one that I didn't like as a youth and that's the elfstones of shanara this is my original copy don't you miss fantasy covers like this I do anyway elfstones is brilliant it is the first time that Brooks kind of starts to stray away from you know what the Publishers wanted which was basically another formulaic clone of token which sort of shanara frankly was and this went some really interesting directions had some great characterization and I thought was by far the best of all of the seven Terry Brooks novels that I read a few years ago I'm not reading any more of that auth I'm exploring other authors but I still love this one and this is one that I don't think I'll read any more of the shinara series but this is one I'll probably reread because I think this was a very strong entry in that series and I think you could probably read it by your by itself I don't think you have to endure through the 700 pages of sort of shanara to get to it not that it's bad it's just formulaic and derivative but elfstones elfstones is where it's at for Terry Brooks as far as I'm concerned so another one that I read as a youth not quite as young as these other ones but there's a classic that I read senior year in high school we had to do an author study where we had to read three or more works of an author and find commonalities of theme and and things like that within the author's works that you were going to read and I chose George Orwell because I had wanted to read 1984 for quite some time and one of the other things that I read by Orwell was animal farm and at the time I loved 1984 that opinion has not changed but I didn't like animal farm at all and I reread these I don't know it's been within 5 years and I think this is a better book I honestly do it's a lesson on concise storytelling and it's a strong allegory and all the way to the LA it has one of those most memorable last sentences of a book you'll ever read but of the two books this is the one I thought about a lot more than the other and again I still love 1984 but Animal Farm is fantastic my next top 10 video I don't know when I'll do it I keep promising these and then I don't get around to them but my next top 10 video will be my top 10 favorite Classics and I have a strong suspicion Animal Farm is going to be on that list so I was wrong about animal farm so there's another classic I was wrong about and this one was not me reading this as an 18-year-old but about 10 years ago I read crime in punishment for the first time this was one of my earliest read reads in Russian literature and a friend said read it it's one of the greatest works of literature full stop and I read it and this is the version I read and I liked it when I told my friend that I liked it I got to look like I had slapped his child and then he asked which translation did you read and it was the constant Garnett now before I go further if you love the constant Garnett translation good for you keep reading it awesome I'm happy for you didn't work for me so he recommended another translation he said it's worth it and then he quoted a passage from the book where he quoted the two different translations because he has a brain like that and he quoted this different translation which I picked up by Richard pavier and Lissa volansky Crime and Punishment by virtue of this reread with a different translator not only did this become one of my favorite Classics but it became one of my favorite books of all time and I'm glad I had that experience because it really showed me that the translator of translated fiction is so so important that you choose the right one and for me I just needed a more modern translation and if you say that you know the modern translations aren't as good I was reminded when I read there was a new translation of the tin drum by Gunter Grass and it was the 30th anniversary of that book and he got together new translators from all across the world for all these different languages that they were going to translate it into and something he said that really stuck with me was that each generation there are changes in the language so works if they're going to be read in a different language probably need to be updated by a translation I don't know if that's true or not I'm using him as a source to support my argument that you need to pick the right translation for you I do enjoy the Vol hansky translations I've read dozens of them in Russian literature at this point and I'm glad that I discovered it because I didn't love the constant Garnett version I still liked it but I absolutely loved this translation so Crime and Punishment I'm glad I gave it a second shot because it is one of my favorite works of all time and last but certainly not least I'm going to upset one of the Sacred cows of fantasy book there are three sacred cows in fantasy book that you can't talk ill about or else people are going to come at you you can't talk ill about Meo and you can't talk ill about Sanderson and you can't talk ill about Harry Potter and I'm going to talk ill about Harry Potter I had to include at least one book on this list where my reception went the other direction and the book that went the other direction for me is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows initially I really enjoyed it because like most people I was just excited that it was out I read it really quick I read it in like two days I remember reading the last 500 pages in one sitting just to find out what happens of this big series that's that's been beloved and going on for a long time I still love the series I still think there's a lot of greatness in this series but the finale as a whole I think disappointed me on quite a few levels I will not begin with even talking about the worst part of this finale which is that steaming bag of excrement called the epilog I won't even mentioned that but there were two narrative choices in this finale that the more I thought about it the more I realized that it just wasn't very strong and she missed some opportunities for a couple reasons hate to be negative so I'll try I'll try to be brief the first one is and hey this is spoilers this book is way old very popular there's movies so if you don't want to be spoiled for number seven click to the end of the video but Harry Potter 7 here are just two reasons why I didn't think it was a very strong finale number one narrative choices for so long in this book we have Ron and Harry and hermion just kind of lost in the woods you know Harry's ruffling his brow cuz he doesn't know what a horcrux is and Hermione is ruffling her brow as she reads her book for the 70th time and Ron's ruffling his brow cuz he's just a walking bag of inferiority complex anyway we got like interminable chapters about that then we find out like at Hogwarts we got Neville and Jenny and all the kids are fighting back Dumbledore's Army is like reassembled and they're fighting back against Snape and the rest of them like why couldn't we get more of that that would have been amazing the other aspect of this book that was was a bit lousy for me is that you can't make an omelette without cracking a few eggs it was quite obvious that this was an author writing in fear and she couldn't kill anybody of notes and I know this is still like ya fantasy and ya fantasy is all about wish fulfillment but I thought as the series progressed and got progressively more adult starting in the fourth book culminating in the sixth book which I think is the finest in the series I thought that she would have the guts to have a stronger ending I was talking with an author friend recently and he said something that stuck with me which applies to this and that is if you kill a character that nobody cares about you didn't really kill a character and that's what happened in this book all of the deaths in this book are characters that nobody really care about and someone's screaming Fred or George or whichever one died I don't know because I found both of those characters the same and interchangeable in the series so you still have one of them so that's not a huge loss there I really think she should have killed Ron when he found the Sword of Gryffindor would have been a heroic ending for him to have drowned getting this hor Crux it would have changed my whole perspective on the character or something there's just so many I mean I can rant more about this book I mean the villains just end up being milk toast and weak in this book but the more I thought about this book The More I realized just I think it was a missed opportunity and I think it was a weak conclusion to what was otherwise a very good book series that I've read twice and I'll probably read it again I still love the Harry Potter books even despite the things wrong with this and if you want a rant video about the epilog don't ask I don't like to break a lot of negativity into the world but that epilogue I could go on for days anyway those are seven books that I admit I was wrong I'd love to hear any books that you've had that experience where over time you realized it wasn't as good as you thought or it was a lot better than you thought please let me know in the comments section below if you like this video please like And subscribe you can also find me on Twitter Goodreads and the the Fireside Discord I'd love to interact with you there as always thank you for watching until next time goodbye

Channel: Red Fury Books

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Id: cMwbkKccHmo

Length: 16min 4sec (964 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 21 2024