I fully agree with your point, and your experience is similar to mine in a sense.
I got lucky in never "bending" to the task of reading because I had to, just reading the school curriculum books if they were interesting to me. And I enjoyed reading greatly. But some books Ichose to read I slogged through and could not enjoy them because of my lack of maturity and perspective. Revisiting them revealed a lot more depth. And my reading of them grew with my understanding of the world. So I guess the experience is normal. And I wonder if I did not slug through those books at that time if I would have ever reached the insight I had on subsequent reading.
I am certain things from a good book stick with you, even if you don't recall it explicitly. It just lingers there in the back of your head, like bricks that are piled up on each other until you don't see them anymore but you do see the wall they form.
I agree as well and had a similar but slightly different experience. I think that some of the material that I read in high school was great; but not appropriate for my age. While reading that material in school, I was bored and frustrated because I did not have enough life experiences (and empathy) to understand the emotional delicacy that the piece was bringing to my mental palette.
When I grew up (just by a few years) and accidentally re - discovered a work that I hated in school, I found it extremely deep and thought provoking.
Maybe high school students are not a great audience for appreciating a lot of literature, at least I wasn't.
I got lucky in never "bending" to the task of reading because I had to, just reading the school curriculum books if they were interesting to me. And I enjoyed reading greatly. But some books Ichose to read I slogged through and could not enjoy them because of my lack of maturity and perspective. Revisiting them revealed a lot more depth. And my reading of them grew with my understanding of the world. So I guess the experience is normal. And I wonder if I did not slug through those books at that time if I would have ever reached the insight I had on subsequent reading.
I am certain things from a good book stick with you, even if you don't recall it explicitly. It just lingers there in the back of your head, like bricks that are piled up on each other until you don't see them anymore but you do see the wall they form.