I’ve been rereading Sandman, which was deeply important to me in my young adulthood but has fallen flat for the last decade+. This reread has been filled with thoughts like “Gaiman is so overrated” and “what did I ever used to get out of this?” Until I got to book 9, where it out of nowhere started hitting me at levels of depth I had no conception of at 20.
So I think some of what’s happening is that having a catchy beginning isn’t that correlated with having a strong ending, and young people are easier to hook at the beginning due to less experience. There are lots of books with deeply satisfying endings but so-so beginnings, and people only get to the ending if they’re easily impressed enough to get through the meh beginning.
This is really clear with good-but-cliched books: if it’s your first time reading the trope you can just enjoy the good parts. But I think it’s true for a lot of books on a more subtle level.
I’ve been rereading Sandman, which was deeply important to me in my young adulthood but has fallen flat for the last decade+. This reread has been filled with thoughts like “Gaiman is so overrated” and “what did I ever used to get out of this?” Until I got to book 9, where it out of nowhere started hitting me at levels of depth I had no conception of at 20.
So I think some of what’s happening is that having a catchy beginning isn’t that correlated with having a strong ending, and young people are easier to hook at the beginning due to less experience. There are lots of books with deeply satisfying endings but so-so beginnings, and people only get to the ending if they’re easily impressed enough to get through the meh beginning.
This is really clear with good-but-cliched books: if it’s your first time reading the trope you can just enjoy the good parts. But I think it’s true for a lot of books on a more subtle level.