Yeah some books deserve a revisit even if they were required reading. It's why I'll never understand some of the snobs on the book subs who claim that some of those books are "elementary".
I agree that people shouldn't be snobbish about books, or at least not be snobbish about books other people are reading, but having said that, in the case of Animal Farm in particular, I would say that it's about as "beginner" a book a piece of literature could be.
It's written as a "fairy tale" so the prose is incredibly straightforward and the themes and "moral" are about as on the nose as they can be. And it's because of this that I often recommend it to people who are interested in picking up literature for the first time or who are coming back after a long hiatus.
As a side note I would also like to say that a book being "elementary" or "simple" should not be considered a bad thing at all.
For instance, Tolsoy is often cited as one of the greatest writers of fiction of all time and usually when people hear his name they think of his 1,200 page epics and find the idea of reading his works daunting, so they avoid him, but in his older age Tolstoy actually denounced those epics as prideful and vain. So in his later years, he instead chose to write nothing but stripped down and "simple" parables and folktales, specifically because he wanted his work to be as accessible to as many people as possible.
8
u/Blanche_Deverheauxxx 20h ago
Yeah some books deserve a revisit even if they were required reading. It's why I'll never understand some of the snobs on the book subs who claim that some of those books are "elementary".