When I read Pride and Prejudice as a teenager, I loved the romance. In my thirties I loved the comedy. Nowadays, I treasure the little moments where Jane Austen reveals her claws!
This and the humor has always been my favorite part of Austen! I think that people who see Austen's works only as romance novels, and compare her to modern romance writers are kind of missing the point. Not that there's anything wrong with a little fluffy, light romance. We all need a little brain-candy once in a while. But Austen's works are more than that.
Back on topic, I find a lot of Enid Blyton's works pretty hard to read these days. I know that they've been bowdlerized heavily to make them less sexist/racist/etc, but they're still just not as amazing as I remember.
Here's another one - I used to love the Little Women books as a girl. But when I re-read them recently, I found that I didn't like or sympathize with the characters nearly as much as I used to do. By contrast, when I went back to the Little House on the Prairie books, I found myself really appreciating for the first time how hard and hand-to-mouth their lives really were. Actually, it may have been the fact that I went back to LW right after re-reading LHOTP that changed my feelings for it. I found it a bit hard to see the Marches as poor when they owned their own house, had steady income, and don't have to eat just biscuits and boiled potatoes for supper. And the fact that Meg had fifty dollars to spend on silks, when Ma was worried about spending a few cents for candy on the train kind of cemented that for me. Intellectually, I realize that it's all relative and that you can be poor without being almost destitute as the Ingalls' were. But going straight from one series to the other, when you haven't read either in years, was a really jarring experience. I may have to try Little Women again in a few years, when I've had my 'palate cleansed', do so speak.
