Re-Reading
I’ve been re-reading books lately. The last time I did a lot of re-reading was when I was little and the books took on the order of 30 minutes to read and had lots of pictures (Richard Scarry, Frog and Toad, etc. Those illustrations and words are permanently forged into my childhood memories).
The only thing I re-read that much when I was a little older was Elfquest.
My feeling was always that there are so many amazing books out there, it would be crazy to re-read anything!
(My to-read list is so big, it fades over the horizon like the ocean.)
But now that I’m old enough to have read many of my favorites decades ago, I’m getting a lot of enjoyment out of revisiting some of them to see how well my memories of them match the reality and to see what I get out of them now.
I’ve been interspersing old favorites with new finds for a couple years now and it’s been very interesting. There have been a few disappointments, but it’s generally been fun to see how much more deeply I appreciate certain aspects of things I read when I was younger.
Oh, and Elfquest? Wow, that aged way better than I expected. What a brilliant story. Wendy Pini is a genius.
I’ve also been doing a lot of re-reading children’s books. Kids love hearing favorites again and again. I’ve read the first Harry Potter a bunch and I appreciate it more each time. Anne of Green Gables has been an amazing both times through. Little Lord Fauntleroy never fails to charm us. And I’ve made a reading of Dicken’s A Christmas Carol a yearly ritual for the last five years. That last chapter always has us grinning from ear to ear.
Of course, there’s also a lot to be said for deeply learning a book by re-reading it over a span of time. Some books are so dense, it’s nearly impossible to absorb them all in one go, even if you go slow and make notes. Technical books can be like that. Or books of wisdom or philosophy. But that’s only one aspect of what I’m thinking about here.
I’m more interested in the idea of the book as a place: and this is going back to revisit a favorite vacation spot now and then rather than finding a new place to explore every weekend.
I’ve never forgotten about this article by Stephen Marche: Centireading force: why reading a book 100 times is a great idea (theguardian.com)
"I have read two books more than a 100 times, for different motives and with different consequences. Hamlet I read a 100 times for my dissertation, The Inimitable Jeeves by PG Wodehouse a 100 times for comfort. The experience is distinct from all other kinds of reading. I’m calling it centireading."
I love that article and have, appropriately, re-read it many times, though well short of 100!
And just yesterday, my Internet friend, Salman Ansari wrote this piece: Repetition as Ritual (letter.salman.io).
But there is much to learn from what we think we already know. Each time we revisit material, we discover new meaning in it. We are not the same person who first encountered it, so we see it from a new lens.
Bingo!
It’s not just the comfort of revisiting an old favorite. It’s a re-examination. It’s a way to know that thing more deeply. And it’s a way to make that thing part of you by absorbing it into your mind.
And not just books, I’ve been re-watching movies.
This card is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, but was inspired to actually write after reading The Explore-Exploit Dilemma in Media Consumption (gwern.net). Specifically this passage:
I tend to default to a new movie, reasoning that I might really like it and discover a new classic to add to my library. Once in a while, I rewatch some movie I really liked, and I like it almost as much as the first time, and I think to myself, "why did I wait 15 years to rewatch this, why didn’t I watch this last week instead of movie X which was mediocre, or Y before that which was crap? I’d forgotten most of the details, and it wasn’t boring at all! I should rewatch movies more often."
Is this ever relatable!
Also, most of the movies we watch these days are family-friendly fare for the kids, so when I get a rare chance to watch some made for people over the age of 12, I’m often torn about what to see: something new I might not like or something I haven’t seen in a long time that I will almost certainly like?
This is where Sturgeon’s Law (wikipedia.org) plays strongly against watching new movies.
I used to watch a ton of movies. Most of them were terrible! But I found the gems.
Now that I’m watching maybe one R-rated movie every six months, it’s really hard to justify trying something new! Especially since I own a bunch of favorites on Blu-Ray that I haven’t seen in years.
Another interesting thing about re-watching is that I used to do that a lot too. I’ve probably seen the Star Wars trilogy (don’t ask me which trilogy, there is only one trilogy and Han shot first) at least 50 times. Maybe more. Blade Runner, Alien, Aliens, Pulp Fiction, The Big Lebowski. Highlander. Those movies were so full of visual and verbal riches that I never tired of watching them.