Many years ago when I was in college, I took a course on the modern European novel. We read Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice," which many of us liked so much that we asked our instructor if we should read some other books by Mann such as "Buddenbrooks" or "The Magic Mountain." He told us that neither of those books should be read by anyone under the age of 40. Can you think of books that will not reveal themselves fully to the reader until one has reached, say, the age of 60? Or books that one may have read at an early age that ought to be reread once one has the experience of having spent six decades or so on the planet?

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