No matter how acclaimed a book is or how many English professors call it their favorite work of literature, it’s possible and totally valid to hate it. It is possible to dislike an author and all of their books, but I think there’s a right book for the right time in your life.

This is my advice: don’t force yourself to read a book you hate, but don’t abandon it forever either. There’s a reason certain books win awards or end up in school curriculums; they embody the times in which they were written and speak important truths about life and humankind. It’s possible to hate a book now but love it in the future. Often times, some books begin to make sense only after having attained certain experiences.

In my senior year of high school, I went through a “read-only-the-famous-books” phase. I compiled a list of books from online lists like “Best Books of All Time” or “30 Books You Should Read by You’re 30”. That’s when I picked up Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook.

Nothing was better at putting me to sleep than Lessing’s book. She is just so descriptive that I would be reading the words on the pages, but not paying attention to them at all. It was like the “in one ear, out the other” but with my eyes! The words were like pictures that just wouldn’t come together in my head. I hated reading it. Nevertheless, I persisted because The Golden Notebook was famous and acclaimed, and Lessing was a Nobel Prize for Literature. I wanted to finish so I can feel a sense of accomplishment of having read a long, difficult book and tell people that I have experience. In a month, I pushed through twenty excruciating pages but completely abandoned it when the college application season arrived.

About a year later, during my first winter break as a college student, I picked it up again--partially because I wasted ten bucks ordering the book on Amazon so I was stuck with it, but mostly because I was curious if I could digest Lessing’s writing better now. I started all over again from page one; something was different. After just a few pages, I felt the “click” that assured me that I would enjoy the rest of the novel. I had a new appreciation for Lessing’s subtlety and elegant prose. She revealed the psychologies of her characters through a narration of their gestures and the slightest expressions.

The Golden Notebook also discusses feminism in depth. Lessing explores women’s search for liberation and equality during the rise of the Communist Party in England. She speaks within the bounds of Anna’s mind, the protagonist of the book, who resembles Lessing herself. Anna’s experience as a young activist and later on a professional woman -- as Anna is also a writer -- may reflect a good amount of Lessing’s life. The book, while it explores the fallacies and the corruption of the Communist Party, is also a profound analysis of a woman’s role in society, her family, and relationships. The conflicts that Anna faces in her job, sex life, and motherhood are universal.

The novel became relevant to me after I took a writing course on feminism and the words that are assigned feminine values during the Fall semester. Prior to the course, the only exposure to feminism I got was through Tumblr, which shaped me as a misinformed, angry “feminist” with no true knowledge of the movement beside the 1920 suffrage. Only after having learned the history of feminism, feminine writing, and women authors, Lessing’s writing and Anna’s plight finally made sense to me.

Put down the book that your brain cannot digest and find the one that you like. It’s okay to leave a book unfinished if it’s disagreeable. Just don’t leave them forever; give the books that you’ve shoved to the back of your shelf another chance some other time. It may just be that you weren’t ready for them like I was. But, of course, it can be just a matter of taste and preference in writing styles, which are totally okay, too.