I bounced off The Name of the Wind twice and then read it during a bad month and finally understood what everyone was talking about
First attempt was maybe six years ago. I got about a hundred pages in and put it down. Not because it was bad, I could tell the writing was good, but nothing was happening in a way that grabbed me. Kvothe was clearly going to be brilliant and tragic and I just didn't care yet. I was reading a lot of grimdark at the time and wanted plot and consequence and the slow inn framing device did nothing for me.
Second attempt two years later. Made it maybe a hundred and fifty pages. Same problem. Rothfuss writes beautifully but I kept waiting for something to happen and kept feeling like the story was very confident I already cared about Kvothe more than I actually did.
Third attempt was about eighteen months ago. I was going through a genuinely rough stretch, not going to get into it, and I picked it up mostly because it was there and I needed something to disappear into.
Something had shifted. I don't know if it was where I was in my life or just having read enough by then to settle into a different pace, but the slowness stopped feeling like a problem and started feeling like the point. The way Kvothe tells his own story, the distance between who he is now and who he's describing, the sense that he's leaving things out on purpose. I noticed all of it this time and it made the whole thing feel layered in a way I had completely missed before.
I finished it in four days. Started The Wise Man's Fear immediately after.
I don't think I was wrong to bounce off it the first two times. I think I just wasn't the right reader for it yet. Curious if anyone else has had this with a specific book, where the timing of when you read it changed everything about how it landed.