The Jewel in the Crown/Paul Scott, I think partly because I was expecting it to be something else and anyway I was in Paris. Got into it later and couldn't stop...

The Romantic by William Boyd —Judging a book by it's first chapter should be a thing too.

One Day by David Nicholls couldn’t get past the first chapter or so on two occasions. Lock down happened and I tried it again and loved it 😊

I must have started Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" about 30 times, before I decided to miss out the first few chapters and discover how good the book was.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell. First time I got confused by the names and gave up. Second time my book group read it and I wrote her names and roles down as I went along and loved it.

Dune by Frank Herbert. Tried reading it when I was 8-9. Utterly failed and didn’t enjoy it. Grabbed it again when I was 16, loved it. Read it again in my late 20s and loved it even more.

Grapes of wrath. School book when I was 13. Hated it . Tried again a few times still hated. Read it last summer , magnificent!

Conversation in the Cathedral by Vargas Llosa. First time I read it I missed the way the narrative was constructed - ie it switches to someone talking. A decade later started again, caught that and fell right in

Rebecca. Tried it so many times over the years , but couldn’t get into it. Picked it up again at the start of the pandemic and devoured it. It’s now my favourite book. Not sure if it was the isolation at the time, but it was like reading a different book

Slaughterhouse 5, read it in holiday, didn’t like it. Read it again 3 years later and it’s one of my top 10 books ever. Think I wasn’t concentrating first time round.

Mansfield Park. Read it as a teen and loathed every character. Re-reading it in my 40s I realised it is about the niaivety of youth; the characters are only sympathetic once you realise how young they are. Not something I could see as a teen… or would have wanted to be told