Feb 20 2009
Re-reading
How do you feel about re-reading books that you have read before?
I never used to be one to re-read novels …. aside from a very few when I was a teenager: The Thornbirds , Ballet Shoes , and Anne of Green Gables stand out - oh, and Cheaper by the Dozen .
Lately, though, I have found that I am a lot more open to reading things more than once.
Maybe it’s just that I’m getting older and my memory isn’t what it used to be?
Or perhaps it is that now that I actually have a degree in English behind me, I read differently - I pay a lot more attention.
These days, I am just as likely to pick up a book I’ve already read as I am a new one..even though I do tend to have a ~few~ new ones at any given time. Haven’t even taken the 4 I bought at the bookstore the other day out of their bag yet… my bad!
Anyway … ’nuff about me…what about you?
Do you read books more than once?
Do you have favourites that you go back to repeatedly?
I just read The Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man last summer for the first time. One of those books that keeps coming up in some of my courses.. people assume everyone has read it… so I did
Absolutely. I read new books, but I have three full bookshelves of books I reread chronically and another five or six bookshelves filled with books I read once in a while. I don’t keep books I don’t intend to read again.
My rereaders (the favorites), some of those have been read dozens of times.
Hi flit! Yes, I have old friends I like to revisit from time to time. I approach literature the same way I approach all the other arts. You wouldn’t look at a painting or a sculpture, or listen to a piece of music, just once, would you? And I don’t think it’s a matter of a faulty memory; it’s appreciation of a thing done well.
(And I hope I wasn’t just redundant. I typed the same thing about 10 minutes ago and it just disappeared when I hit the submit button. I figured it’s been 10 minutes, still hasn’t shown up, so it must really be gone!)
Hi Roy
Sorry …I wasn’t paying attention or I’d have clicked the button to let it post … first time comments are moderated… from now on your comments should just go right through, though.
Any particular books you read over and over?
Steph, have your re-reading habits changed now that you have the eReader?
I’m really thinking that one of those might need to magically appear at some point… jump into my amazon cart or something
Let’s see… I go back and read all 8 of Josephine Tey’s mystery novels once in a while, and three of them The Franchise Affair, To Love and Be Wise, and The Daughter of Time are particular favorites. Two of Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey novels are also favorites: The Nine Tailors and Busman’s Honeymoon. Of course, I’m also one of those Tolkien fanatics who reads The Lord of the Rings through every couple of years. Stephen King’s The Stand is another. Laurie R. King’s Kate Matinelli series and her Mary Russell series. And several of Ursula K. LeGuin’s books, but especially The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness. And while that might look like a lot of books to be reading over and over, keep in mind that I’m an avid reader, so they really end up like raisins scattered here and there in a lot of scones.
oh, I did that with the Wheel of Time series, Drofen …. still lost interest though … which is a good thing as it turns out
Roy, I don’t think I’ve ever read anything by Josephine Tey …. I shall have to watch for her work in the used bookstores
I re-read if it is something I loved and haven’t read in a long time. I also re-read if it’s part of a series when a new book comes out. For example, the Big Stone Gap books by Adriana Trigiani. Each time she puts out a new book in that series, I go back and re-read them all. I get something different out of them each time.
~Kelly
http://www.30somethingandsearching.today.com/
Cool…this thread is turning into a great source of new books & authors for me to look forward to finding and reading sometime soon!
I’m going to have to make a list to print out and stick in my purse
When I was younger I very seldom reread books. But that I’m older, and my memory is on the frirtz, I can reread books and almost feel like I’m reading them for the first time!
Still, I don’t do it very often. There are so many books I want to read that I haven’t read yet — far more than I will ever be able to get to — so those tend to get top priority.
Oh, you wanted specifics? Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s Liaden series and Georgette Heyer (and, yes, Lee like’s ‘em too) are at the top of my reread list. Nora Roberts, JD Robb, Ludlum, Heinlein, Herbert, McCaffrey, Stephen King, Jennifer Roberson, Asprin, Dianna Wynne Jones, The Artemis Fowl books, Dave Barry, Lord Peter Whimsy series, Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas), Shogun (Clavell), Hawaii (Michener), Pride and Prejudice (Austin), Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte), Watership Down (Adams?), Collections of Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side, Dilbert, Bloom County and Peanuts, Fruits Basket (of course, though most of them are at my sister’s house), Shakespeare and, of course, Poe.
And, yes, there’s more, but that’s what I can see from here.
specifics are always good…. what the heck is Aspirin though? I mean other than a headache remedy of course
I can relate to that, msTerri…. SO many books, so little time!
Oh, my Jane Austen books are my dearest friends. They are there to pick me up and comfort me whenever I’m feeling down…or just need to feel snuggly. I enjoy Pride & Prejudice, but I confess that I prefer Sense & Sensibility and Persuasion a little more.
I have only read P&P, oldwestmom, but I downloaded the others to my eReader so I can check ‘em out.
Robert Lynn Asprin - He wrote the Mythadventures, flit.
I was more of a rereader when I was younger.
Heidi was read at least 30 times, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was read multiple times, White Fang, all of the Little House on the Prarie series, The Prisoner’s Sword, The Floating Town, Nila and the Crocodile, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Anne of Green Gables series, Emily Climbs, etc series, etc., were all read many multiple times. Some other series - The Stonewycke Trilogy and the Love Comes Softly series.
One book which I first read when I was 11 - Mindy by June Strong, I read many times as I was growing up, but still read it once or twice every year even now.
There aren’t too many books I reread now though, mainly because I have a really good library with a huge selection of books to choose from.
oh, I loved Heidi when I was a kid…. that was definitely one I re-read
I often re-read books I love, and I always have. (For example, I can’t count how many times I’ve read the Chronicles of Narnia or Lord of the Rings.)
My favourite books in the world — the 6 volumes of Dorothy Dunnett’s “Lymond Chronicles” — get re-read every few years. But really, if I like a book, I like going back to it later, like revisiting an old friend. So every book in my library is likely to get re-read eventually.
adding Dunnett & Gatsby to my list…. I love this thread ….I’ve got lots of things to look for in used book stores now
I absolutely love to re-read books. I read so many in a given year that I easily forget and like to be reminded about what I read. While waiting for a new Janet Evanovich I have gone through the whole series at least three times until I get to the new one…
I like to re-read the Food of Love by Anthony Capella, a gastronomical delight in more ways than one.
Alternatively, The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins his use of language is addictive.