I don't know about you guys, but I am typically not a rereader of books. I read them, enjoy them, and then smile at them as they sit on my shelf and look pretty. I think this causes my excellent parents some despair, as I can read a four-hundred-page book in six hours, so there's $20 gone in one afternoon. Heh.
But sometimes, there are books that I do reread. And oftentimes it's sort of random which ones I'll pick. I've reread both INKHEART and THE THIEF LORD on a whim; EAST and THE BOOK THIEF were both favorites of mine that I'd borrowed in order to read, and so when I finally bought them both, of course I sat down to read through them again. I've read PAPER TOWNS twice. I reread all seven Harry Potter books this winter (in fact, I've read PRISONER OF AZKABAN so many times that my copy has literally fallen apart. This makes me incredibly sad.) I've reread Tamora Pierce's books quite a few times, in spite of the fact that my edition of the SONG OF THE LIONESS quartet makes me want to give her proofreader a stern talking to.
Right now I am rereading PRIDE & PREJUDICE for the fourth or fifth time (I feel like this is quickly becoming that book that I actually sit down and reread every year) and am waiting for my sister to read PLAIN KATE so I can reread that.
So while it seems that I do reread books more often than I originally thought (clearly buying them is now justified :P), I do tend to go a long time in between rereads. Before this winter, I hadn't touched the Harry Potter books since I finished the seventh one in lightning speed several years ago. I don't think I've done a Tamora Pierce reread in a couple of years now. (I have reread PRIDE & PREJUDICE fairly recently, as I said. Hello, I am a massive nerd, nice to meet you.)
So while I do prefer reading new books to rereading old ones (thank you, library card) there are some that are just too good to not reread, that just have to be revisited. I'm sure people say this all the time, but the metaphor exists for a reason - rereading a favorite book really is like visiting a friend you haven't talked to in a long time. It's so easy to fall right back into that comfortable place.
How about you guys? Do you have books that you reread again and again?
The last time I reread a book was probably sometime in high school when I was attempting to reread all of the Harry Potter books, I failed. That's partly because I didn't own all of the books, and I was borrowing them from the school library.
ReplyDeleteThere are two books though I can remember reading again and again when I was younger. The Little Sea Pony was one of them as well as one of the Dear America books. I still love those two books, even today.