Reading and Re-Reading

[fabrisse]

This poll came about because I tripped over a book I hadn't read in years at Amazon. It's the right time of year for it. I may be buying it on Kindle. *G*

[Poll #1452746]

Comments

[moria923.livejournal.com]

For me, I'm always most likely to read novels. But in the past few years, I've consciously tried to find novels which are set at the time of year in which I'm reading them. There are also certain genres that sort of seem to go with certain times of year: gothic in the fall, for instance. And novels or histories about the Renaissance are usually for spring.

I'm not a frequent rereader. As a girl I didn't develop the habit of rereading, since most books were borrowed from the braille library and then returned. Of course, during college I realized how much more I could get out of books by rereading them, and did for term papers. But I'm only now starting to develop the habit of casual rereading. It started when I reread all of the first six Harry Potters in preparation for welcoming the seventh. I was amazed at how much was in there that I'd forgotten. Last year I read Le Guin's THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS, and it was the first book that has ever moved me so powerfully that I had to start rereading it *immediately*. (That was also a product of the library phenomenon: I got to the end and knew I wasn't done with this story and these characters, so I had to reread it before I could send it back.)

A friend of ours said he'd read the end of the last Harry Potter before the beginning. When I asked about the wisdom of this, he said that if he read the end of a book first, he could then understand what the author was doing while he read the book. I accused him of trying to read and reread at the same time. I can't imagine that working very well.

[bibliothekara.livejournal.com]

Interesting survey. (Every survey needs a "Say what?" button.

I was much more of a rereader when I was a pre-teen than I am now. Mostly they were a small group of fantasy novels. (I remember my mother used to nag me about it, I guess mostly because she wanted me to try new things.) But I did appreciate them more at different ages, I think. Finding new things.

There are also some history/biography books lying around that I started at various points, but never finished, and really should. (The one that springs to mind is Edmund Morris's bio of Theodore Roosevelt.) But now that I'm out of college, I have rediscovered reading for fun, and it's so awesome. I'm alternating right now between a)working my way through Discworld, and b) reading any American history book that catches my fancy. (Again, separation from High School-based American history OVERLOAD helps a lot.)