Changing Tastes

My family lived in Amman, Jordon, when I was young. I was a very picky eater at the time, and Mama was determined to get me to try new foods. One of those foods was halwa (also spelled halva), which is a very sweet paste made with nuts and either sugar or honey. The first time I tasted it, I hated it. The next time, it was just okay. But before long, I was taking halwa sandwiches to school every day by my choice. Unfortunately, when I tried halwa many years later as an adult, my tastes had changed again. I don’t hate it, but I do find it way too sweet to take in large doses.

Reading tastes can change, too.

When I was in high school, George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss was one of my favorite books. I loved it for a number of reasons, including the detailed description that helped me see the setting and the characters.

Now jump to 2019. I am currently listening to The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins as I walk for exercise. Although I’m enjoying the story, there are times when the description drags on and on and I just want to tell the narrator to fast forward. Unfortunately, if I tried to fast-forward on my own, I might miss something important. So I’m putting up with it.

I haven’t read The Mill on the Floss for a number of years, and it is on my short list of books to read—or in this case reread—in the near future. Hopefully I will enjoy the description as much as I did when I was a teenager. It may depend on how much is really necessary to the story, but that’s the subject of next week’s post.

The point here is that reading tastes change. Just because you loved something when you were younger doesn’t mean you will love it now. But the opposite can also be true.

So this may be the time to try something different.

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The mill in the picture isn’t on the River Floss in England. I took the photo in 2010 while visiting the Bollinger Mill State Historic Site in Missouri.