But great books are rereadable in part because you can go back to it at different ages and get something new out of it each time. For me _Walden_, _Self-Reliance_, and _The Republic_---to name a few---do just that.
Now I'm approaching middle age. Last year I was looking for books to read in a language I'm learning. I decided to re-read Catcher, and to my surprise, found it heartbreaking. I mostly remembered the plot, but it was a completely different book to me as a man than as a boy.
Everything Holden does is in the shadow of his grief over his dead brother. As a kid, that flew over my head. I couldn't have understood the hole in your heart that comes from losing someone you deeply love and admire. I didn't get the sad chain of cause and effect - there are hints at how it affects everyone in his family.
It's a beautiful and subtle book, and it rewards re-reading later in life.
Which is fine, I’m glad they enjoyed it and whatever but personally I thought it was a bad poorly written book that doesn’t deserve anywhere near the love it gets.
What you offer is not a "counterpoint," as you put it. It's the equivalent of: "I don't like ketchup, ketchup is bad, people who like ketchup are stupid."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of...
exactly. You hear different things in the music (the secondary melody lines, the bass, etc.) and in books you savor the prose.
IF that's your thing, of course. If it's just "find out how it ends" then you already know.
For me it's just the beauty of the prose. I just marvel as how he describes things. I just wonder if there's something I can take from that.
If the goal of reading is to be more productive, then what matters is your ability to remember the text. In this case, active recall and spaced repetition are far more efficient than rereading.
This is a curious argument. Does the author never listen to a song more than once?
Listening to a 4 minute song isn't much of a time investment compared to reading a book.
Also, songs are entirely different beasts. They're designed to be repetitve — e.g, the chorus — and generally aren't plot-based, so there are no spoilers. And music is often more of a background activity than a foreground activity.
When I'm out of books I want to read (which is most of the time), I just switch to some other activity — like watching YouTube or reading my phone — in the hour or two before bed. But these are a lot more disruptive to my sleep than books are.
If I had a policy of never re-reading books, this situation would be a lot worse.
Or, I have noticed people talking about re-watching movies multiple times, and quoting them confidently.
I don't think most of these books are nearly as important as people think they are, in the context of their actual lives. My suspicion is that part of what is driving this is some kind of social pressure or desire to have a common culture. Which is fine, but I think it's stupid to think that there is something more to it.
Another explanation: some people find that new information is just less comfortable for them and would rather repeat the same experience.
Anyway, I think it's the sign of a less adaptable mind or lack of interest in useful information or growth.
There are an effectively infinite number of books, television series, movies, and video games. And I am sure there will be someone sniffing and saying those aren't similar. But they are all media in this context. The reason it does not seem as intractable to get through it all as it really is, is because we naturally filter out most things in general and hone our interest. If we didn't, we would go insane and have no direction. But there are so many books, video games from different eras, movies, etc.
I think it's very ignorant to keep repeating the same ones multiple times when there is so much that you can't possibly get to. And if you say that only a small portion are really worthy of your time, I think that is not objectively true. Again, it just seems that way due to your brain having selected a few bits for your interest. Probably largely based on what you (subconsciously) noticed other people consuming.
There are hundreds of movies and television episodes, and thousands of books and video games produced every year. But let's suppose you ignore 97% of them that aren't extremely popular.
But if you look at only the most popular classical literature, the very most popular books, movies, shows, video games, and ignore the vast majority which were not in the top 3% -- it's still something like 4,000+ media items if you go back to the 1940s. If you run out of those, could you really not look at a few still in the top 10% of popularity? And we are only talking about English language and ignoring any translation or dubbing.
Do you have a response to other comments about valuing the prose, and looking for depth in the art (book in this case)?
My opinion is that a single piece of art can have more variety, and more content than a thousand other pieces of art. Getting to know a single piece can be more fulfilling than a thousand others.
It just sounds like you appreciate uniqueness. But others might enjoy depth. you are quick to dismiss others as shallow, but I think the same point could be made about your interest.
Not every moment of every day needs to be dedicated to expanding your mind, despite what many people on HN think.
You're also disregarding the fact that, if enough time has passed or if some major event has happened since last time, reconsumption can give you an entirely different perspective and understanding of a piece of media, an experience which is being shared elsewhere in this thread. Surely seeing an old story in a new light is more or less as valuable as reading a new story? Why are we focusing on the words on the page rather than the reaction they trigger in the reader?
Reading for fun is OK. Re-reading is OK. Watching TV is OK. Playing videogames is OK. Enjoying life is OK.
Not being productive for more than two seconds is OK.
I didn't get this at all as a main thrust of the article.
The author doesn't like re-reading the works that impacted him the most, because he feels he loses some of that impact and takes a step backwards in his enjoyment when he rereads.
I have felt that, at times. Especially when re-reading too soon. I notice new things; I enjoy the world again; but I often look back at the work less fondly after this is done. In the end, we can't just to who we were reading the work for the first time.
I liked reading the article because it helped me understand part of why I often feel that way.
> Reading for fun is OK.
I think you missed the point. It's not about productivity. Quite the opposite. Here's how the author characterizes rereading in one passage: "Rereading, thus conceived, begins to sound a bit like a punishing self-improvement regime. I can imagine a life coach promoting rereading as part of a lifestyle package, along with nootropic supplements." In another passage, the author compares rereading to a futile attempt to recapture lost youth.
The point of life being short isn't about maximizing productivity but rather about maximizing enjoyment, which is ironically what you thought you were arguing for. By constantly rereading, you're depriving yourself of the enjoyment of the new, of novelty. Rereading has diminishing returns: "There was an immediacy, intensity, and complete surrender involved in the initial experience that could never be repeated and was sometimes even diminished on the second pass."
So does novelty. Sometimes it's better to experience the familiar than the new.
Similar to alcohol and other substances, for some people it's ok to enjoy from time to time, for some it can ruin their life
Basically anything can become an obsession that makes everything else go away, at least for some people.
> Is the compulsion to reread a regression to this infantile state? A denial of maturation? Margaret Atwood suggests that it might be when she compares it to “thumb-sucking” and “hot-water bottles”; she admits that she does rereads only for “comfort, familiarity, the recurrence of the expected.” This also might be the reason why so much rereading apologia is written by those for whom the glow of youth has long passed by
I think about how our society, or at least our economy, appears to possess an endless appetite for series, sequels, prequels, remakes, reboots, adaptations, and spin-offs, ad naseam. For some strange reason, in middle age, the pop culture of my youth has come to be fetishized by the present, even long after I've personally lost interest. I grew up, matured, but it can feel like nobody else did. I enjoy finding new work, novel novels, as it were, and usually eschew rereading. There's so much to discover, so why limit yourself to what you already happened to know at a much earlier point? Sometimes when I do revisit something I enjoyed in the past, I find that it doesn't hold up. I may have originally overlooked certain flaws or other problematic aspects of the work that are apparent to me now. One's sensibilities can change and evolve.
Even speaking academically, some of the most important, influential articles and books I've ever read, that turned my head around, were ones that I've read only once. They affected me so profoundly that I didn't need to reread them.
https://monoskop.org/images/2/27/Horkheimer_Max_Adorno_Theod...
And other works by Adorno, such as Minima Moralia. It comes from Benjamin, of course, but Benjamin's conception is more complex and Adorno serves as a better introduction.
I still have about 50 or so physical books and Im starting to convert the ones I can to kindle.
skipping sentences can be a side effect of ADHD type problems, of course maybe you skip different sentences with each rereading.
If you're like me, hopefully that information is useful for you.
But how do you know that? You are biased: you read that thing, and didn't read the not-yet-read thing.
Statistically, it is unlikely that what you already read is so good that it's the best choice for what to read next compared to all the alternatives.
btw, i disagree with the statistics. it depends on how you choose the next book. i am in a book club and we nominate half a dozen titles each month and then vote on what we read. in two years about half the books were really good. the others were ok. but thanks to the discussion with the others afterwards even the not so good books provide value, especially to aspiring writers.
there is a lot of variety and also trash out there. so if you just pick a book randomly, then statistically you'll read something that is not to your liking. but if you rely on recommendations then statistics should not matter anymore, but rather how much your taste aligns with those making the recommendations.
Unfortunately, the books I like reading the most tend to be the hardest to write, so they are not released very frequently. I like the sorts of books that authors spend several months or years thinking about and planning for.
When I like a book, I almost always find value in re-reading it several times because it gives me an opportunity to dig in and analyze it. I will typically read a good book 2-3 times, and I usually like the second reading the best. My first reading is just a general impression, but my second reading is where I see everything in context and can really savor the author's clever plotting and writing style.
This is my general approach to a lot of other media as well. I dislike most movies, but the movies I most like are the ones that are sufficiently dense and interesting that they merit a re-watch or two. For every good movie I have re-watched and greatly enjoyed myself, I have watched dozens of completely forgettable movies that I immediately wished I hadn't bothered with.
I've never explored this deeply with her, and I'm not sure whether her attitude is one of "gotta catch 'em all", a continual requirement for novelty, or if she simply never, ever considers anything worth reading/watching again (with a few exceptions). She simply doesn't understand why I occasionally want to watch or read something I enjoyed hugely in the past, or don't think I got quite enough out of the first time. To her, my habits are a waste of time.
But I re-read it and thought, “then again the commenter is saying ‘good’ not ‘great’… perhaps they are admitting to more nuance?”
Interesting concepts, thank you.
Footnote: on rereading your message, the sequence 2,3,7,43,1807 jumped out at me as being “Sylvester’s sequence” — sometimes called Euclid numbers — I definitely did not have to look that up in the online integer sequence database and simply know all these things intuitively.
Thanks, no, I prefer winning.
(Proof by contradiction by analogy. Also the same workout twice is never the same workout.)
