The Quiet Joys of Re-Reading

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Even though I'm behind on my yearly reading goal at the moment, and have been over a month, I've been doing some re-reading lately.

The first was Six of Crows, mostly because I wanted to dive into Crooked Kingdom without worrying about not remembering details or minor characters. This turned out to be a smart decision, because while I remembered the overall plot, I'd forgotten a lot of the details. As a bonus, Six of Crows is one of my favorite books ever, so it deserved a re-read anyway.

Right now, I'm finishing up my re-read of Illuminae by Jay Kristoff and Amy Kaufman, once again because I have the sequel (Gemina) and want to go in with the previous book fresh in my mind. This is also proving to be a good decision, not only because I'd forgotten details (which I had, even though I technically finished reading it for the first time this year), but also because it's been really interesting to go through it already knowing the twists. Plus there was one major twist I'd forgotten about, and then remembered before it was revealed, so it's been pretty fascinating to look for the clues and foreshadowing going in. Also, I don't really remember how it ended, so there's that minor tidbit.

Earlier in the year I also re-read Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban for the fifth time, for two of my classes. That was also fascinating, because my last read had been years prior, so it was really cool to re-experience everything I loved about it the first (five) times and read it a little more analytically.

So even though my yearly reading challenge has been yelling at me, it's been a nice change of pace to sit and re-read some of my favorite books before diving into the sequel. And I do think it's productive—examining what it was, exactly, that you liked so much the first time can be a great way to learn. Every time to read a book, you can walk away with something a little different—and to me, that journey never gets old.

Do you enjoy re-reading books? 

Twitter-sized bite:

Do you enjoy re-reading books? Join the discussion on @Ava_Jae's blog. (Click to tweet)

Discussion: Are You a Re-Reader?

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I’ve been thinking about re-reading, lately.

Largely because of my never-ending TBR list (and not-so-infinite allotted time), I don’t re-read quite as much as I used to. And yet, I’ve recently met some people who frequently re-read novels five or six times (sometimes in a row!) and it got me thinking about why we re-read and re-watch and re-consume our favorite media.

I mean, from an outsider perspective, one might think it’d be a little boring to re-read something—after all, don’t you already know what’s going to happen? But as anyone who’s ever re-read a favorite book can tell you, you come out of every reading with something a little different. You notice things on the second and third and fourth readings that you hadn’t picked up on the first time. The nuances become more clear, the foreshadowing obvious, the character development easier to understand.

That, and re-living a favorite book, quite frankly, can be a lot of fun.

Nowadays, the main reason I re-read books is to remember what happened before I dive into the sequel, so I can pick up on the nuances and references from the previous book without pausing to try to wrack my brain to remember what happened. This, of course, really only applies to when there’s been a decent amount of time between the reading of book one and book two, but I find that it really does help me fully understand the sequel.

That being said, I don’t re-read every book before picking up the sequel, especially if it’s a particularly long book (City of Lost Souls, for example? Probably not going to get a re-read before I pick up City of Heavenly Fire, even if I did enjoy it. Which I did). Mostly because of the aforementioned time constraints and mountainous TBR list.

But I’m curious. Do you re-read books? Often? Sometimes? Three or five times? 

Twitter-sized bite: 

Do you re-read books? Often? At all? Several times over?  Join the discussion on @Ava_Jae's blog. (Click to tweet)