Most of us read. But how many of us re-read? Why would someone deliberately read something (especially a lengthy novel) again? The process of re-reading is indeed a slightly different and unique experience from reading for the first time.
David Ulin calls rereading “a tricky process… it’s different than reading, more layered, more nuanced.” After all, you’ve read the material once and it won’t change. So you’re no longer reading for information or the element of surprise.
Instead, you’re reading strictly for pleasure. Rereaders are seeking an experience, possibly even to recapture the feelings they had upon reading for the first time. “Some of the most satisfying reading is re-reading,” says Steve Leveen. “The text stays the same; the reader changes.”
Anne Fadiman explores this idea in her 2005 book Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love. This collection of essays from authors upon rereading their favorite books. It seeks to answer the question: “Is a book the same book―or a reader the same reader―the second time around?”
In his work, Lectures on Literature, author Vladimir Nabokov says: “one cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.” That’s because the more times you read something, the more you can get from it.
According to Anne Bogle in I’d Rather Be Reading you actually can’t re-read a book. Because even though it may be the same book, you’re not the same reader. “Books are worth coming back to, not just because they keep changing for me, but because I am changing as well...A good book, when we return to it, will always have something new to say.”
Reading the same thing a second (or a third) time allows you to go deeper. The first reading is a new discovery when you’re just trying to understand what’s going on. When you read for the second time, you notice more details and patterns developing. And perhaps even the typoes.
But some people disagree. In an article for The Guardian newspaper, journalist Jack Thurston actually calls re-reading a crime and that re-readers “should be ashamed of themselves.” His argument is that there are too many good books out there to be wasting our time on the same books again and again. Thurston just sees re-reading as playing it safe and being snobby.
I think that’s a slight overreaction. And while I occasionally dive into a book I’ve already read years before, I prefer to stick to new materials. Because there are indeed too many good books that I haven’t read yet. And so little time.