alt Hacker NewsIt still feels academic though. Suppose your response to that is, "Well, suck it up, its formalized".
I'd argue that it'd be worse if you could teach your book, and a 50 year old who both has rich lived experience and grew up in the time period the book was talking about has the exact same understanding of said book as a bored edgy 16 year old.
Either you're a godly teacher, or chances are the book doesn't have much depth. And maybe you are a really good teacher, I certainly wouldn't want to teach public school teenagers for a job. But while I'm charitable to teachers, I'm also charitable to the depth of novels.
I read Dostoevsky when I was 16 and I'm still learning more things about him and myself a decade later.
There are books that I read every decade or so, and there is always new insight. Sometimes I will identify with an older character and see the entire story through their eyes.
Often times an interesting novel will prompt me to study the cultural context independently.
There was still tremendous value in exposing myself to Dostoyevsky as a teenager. I have observed myself make the same mistakes as his characters, blinded in the moment by emotion. He had so much insight into human nature - but even if forewarning doesn't prevent us from folly, it can highlight a path to acceptance, repentance or redemption that otherwise may take a lifetime of self-reflection.
I don't mean that in a religious context, if that matters.