There are books that you want to reread several times, discovering something new with each new reading. And there are those who once made a deep impression, but after reading a few years later they left only disappointment in their souls. And the point here is not only in the books, in their artistic merit and the depth of the author's thought. The fact is that a person's perception of any work changes with age, sometimes quite strongly.
It is clear that a person develops the fastest in childhood, and it is then that a person's literary preferences change most rapidly. So, a three-year-old child listens with pleasure to a fairy tale about Ryaba Chicken or Kolobok, and at the age of five he only smiles condescendingly at the invitation to read something like that - he has already "outgrown" this literature, took everything he could from it, and now he will rather become interested in magical fairy tales or funny story poems. Age influences the choice of books to read, and not a small one.
Initial reading comprehension
Preschoolers and junior schoolchildren in the book are primarily interested in the plot. And the older the child, the more complex the storyline he can perceive and appreciate. By the end of elementary school, the child is quite capable of reading works with several intersecting plot lines, a cunning interweaving of a plot, a rather large number of heroes.
Books for young readers abound with nouns and verbs: it is important for a child of this age to know who did what, where he went and what happened next. Descriptions are needed only in order to get an idea of the scene of the action, it is better to imagine the heroes, i.e. are of an auxiliary nature. Unfortunately, some adults never go beyond the plot-event perception of the book.
As a rule, such people, if and read that something like second-rate romance novels or books in the genre of "action".
Average level of reading perception
Further development of reading perception requires a certain training, reading culture. First, with the help of an adult, and then independently, the growing up person begins not only to follow the actions of the heroes, but also to reflect on the book: why did the hero act this way, and not otherwise, what circumstances or features of his character caused this? The child comprehends the basics of the analysis of a literary work.
Now, in order to interest the reader, the book must be more than just fun from the point of view of the plot. He wants to look for explanations for the actions of the characters, tries to put himself in their place, ponders how he would act in a similar situation. At this stage in the development of reading culture, more attention is paid to reasoning, descriptions, and other literary techniques that were previously perceived as "auxiliary" or even "superfluous".
The perception of a literary work is also greatly influenced by the general level of culture and the development of artistic taste.
"Mature" reader
The next stage in the perception and understanding of a literary work is a dialogue with the author. The reader is already aware that the book was created in order to express the ideas of the writer, his ideas about people, their relationships, to understand certain problems. And he begins to reflect with the author, agree with him internally or argue. Along with the description of the action or the dialogues of the heroes, a person with a book in his hands reads with interest the author's digressions, remarks, reflections and descriptions of the emotional experiences of the characters.
Perhaps, having reached this level of perception of the work, the reader will want to learn more about the author, the history of the book's creation, prototypes of characters, read critical articles - all this will help him to understand the author's intention most fully and deeply and determine his own attitude towards him.
But even with a developed reading culture, a mature artistic taste, the perception of the same work may differ for the same person in different periods of life. The role here is played by the life experience of the reader, how much the events described in the book overlap with the realities of his own life, how much the author's moods are in tune with his own, how close the characters are in spirit to him at the moment of reading the work.
