Rereading books?

Hey there, everyone! Thanks for stopping by to smell the books.

Today we will be discussing the concept of rereading books. You would think that every book reader would enjoy rereading their favorite books, or come back to a book that they didn't understand too well to better understand it the next time.

Surprisingly, a large amount of readers hardly ever come back to previously read books, even books that they enjoy. Today, though, with the vast amount of reading material we have access to in the world, many readers (including myself) have a love/hate relationship with rereading. We feel as if there are more, better things to read.

Although I have a hard time getting myself to reread books, I do believe that we need to come back to books that we love. Here are three reasons why we should reread our books, despite the ever-growing pile of unread books on our shelf.

1. Quality over Quantity

This is one of the biggest reasons why I try to reread books. I used to have the mindset that reading a lot of books would make me "well-read (whatever that means." I would often read a lot of books but I didn't truly connect with them because I was too busy thinking about the end result. It was hard for me to enjoy books in the present back then. 

When you reread, it's a great way to assess whether or not the book is what's right for you. Rereading the books allow you to spend quality time with it, instead of speeding through the books and not truly comprehend the story.

2. Better Understanding
When rereading anything, from articles to books to rewatching movies, we gain a wider spectrum of understanding about the story. We often run across deeply hidden themes when we first read a story, because we are fixated on the plot. One great movie example is Napoleon Dynamite: You'd never think that the story of nerdy Napoleon living an awkward life in Iowa would have deep meaning and symbols, but if you watch the movie as many times as I have, you'd be surprised to see that there's more than just surface material.

3. There's Something New Every Time

Every time I reread a book, I always find myself highlighting or penciling in the book just as much as I did last time. I make it my goal to reread three of my favorite books every year, and I find that rereading old memories is creating new ones. Each year I am in a new walk of life and have different perspectives on everything. 


"One of the strongest motivations for rereading is purely selfish: it helps you remember what you used to be like. Open an old paperback, spangled with marginalia in a handwriting you outgrew long ago, and memories will jump out with as much vigor as if you’d opened your old diary. These book-memories, says Hazlitt, are “pegs and loops on which we can hang up, or from which we can take down, at pleasure, the wardrobe of a moral imagination, the relics of our best affections, the tokens and records of our happiest hours.” Or our unhappiest. Rereading forces you to spend time, at claustrophobically close range, with your earnest, anxious, pretentious, embarrassing former self, a person you thought you had left behind but who turns out to have been living inside you all along."
― Anne Fadiman, Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

Here are a few links to other sites that discuss reading:

http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/why-rereading-books-so-important

http://www.readitforward.com/essay/why-reread/

https://www.bustle.com/articles/50770-11-joys-of-re-reading-books-because-starting-over-at-page-1-is-a-feeling-you-cant