The Case for Re-reading

As we steadily and unwillingly accumulate years, most people give up re-reading. Re-reading is a child’s art, the obsessive repetition a quirk of the extremely young. Juvenile book-lovers (a nicer way of saying nerdy kids) pore over their favourite series time and time again, the same way mulish toddlers insist on rewatching their favourite cartoons.

Most adults, acclimatised to our perpetually time strapped world, wonder at this apparent waste of time. What is the point, they ask, of reading a book so many times? Why read the book again, if you already know what’s going to happen? 

Books, works of fiction- are not about knowing what will happen. They are about discovering what will happen. You may know what will happen, but you can still discover it again.  In fact, you can appreciate the journey better when not worried about the destination; the journey the author takes you on; past claustrophobic mental alleys, up staggering summits of genius, across wide plains of persistence. 

People look for different things in books. The practical search for plot, the bored search for characters, the romantic search for emotion, the artistic search for beauty, the nihilistic search for proof, the pretentious search for quotes, and so on. 

Nothing that we enjoy about  a book, especially a good book, magically ‘tarnishes’ after the first read. It may not be the same as opening the book for the first time, sure, but it doesn’t deserve that negative connotation.

 You can be swept away the plot,  and can further appreciate the clues and the red-herrings, and  try to pinpoint the moment the ending becomes inevitable.

Your emotional reactions can be more mature, as you understand the complexities and grey areas better.  Or it can be cathartic, and you may sob or laugh like you have not done before.

You can still wonder about the intricacies of characters, and can construct more vivid fantasies around them.

A writer, who I cannot find the energy too look up, once said that what someone sees in a painting often says less about the artist and more about the viewer . Or something to that effect. How you interpret a book, and how your interpretation changes over time, tells you about yourself.When your reread a book after a long span of time, you don’t just rediscover the book, you rediscover yourself, as your were at that point of time, you see yourself refracted thorough the lens of time. And that is an experience that is always revelatory, often embarrassing, and sometimes nostalgic. 

To all those who complain about the waste of time- ie, why waste time rereading a book and give it more mental space than necessary?

Humanity, as a collective, adores useless repetition and memorisation. Over gruelling millennia, it has painstakingly drilled religious texts, hymns, , random historical dates and Shakespeare, into the mostly unwilling minds of students. People, in order to look sophisticated, memorise poems of Paradise Lost scale, and famous speeches that go on for hours. 

Perhaps that puts rereading a few favourite books in perspective. 

And finally, there is simply an inexpressible  something in reading a piece of beautiful writing over and over, in devouring it with your eyes and trying to absorb it through your pores, so its loveliness may adorn your mind. 

Rereading a book isn’t like reading it for the first time. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t as immersive, isn’t as  delightful, isn’t as valuable, isn't as good, as reading it for the first time.