/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.10636840]

Why do some people like to re-read books? Wouldn't that effort be better spent reading new ones?

On what side of the fence do you fall on?

[Anonymous No.10636879]

“I, too, feel the need to reread the books I have already read," a third reader says, "but at every rereading I seem to be reading a new book, for the first time. Is it I who keep changing and seeing new things of which I was not previously aware? Or is reading a construction that assumes form, assembling a great number of variables, and therefore something that cannot be repeated twice according to the same pattern? Every time I seek to relive the emotion of a previous reading, I experience different and unexpected impressions, and do not find again those of before. At certain moments it seems to me that between one reading and the next there is a progression: in the sense, for example, of penetrating further into the spirit of the text, or of increasing my critical detachment. At other moments, on the contrary, I seem to retain the memory of the readings of a single book one next to another, enthusiastic or cold or hostile, scattered in time without a perspective, without a thread that ties them together. The conclusion I have reached is that reading is an operation without object; or that its true object is itself. The book is an accessory aid, or even a pretext.”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

[Anonymous No.10638224]

>>10636840
If you read the book because you really enjoy it and it's entertaining and amusing to you it's great. I've rewatched some movies and series several times. Some scenes hundred times.
The only book I've reread is Dorian Grey.

[Anonymous No.10638225]

>>10636840
Honestly man, honestly, post images like that again and see what happens.

[Anonymous No.10638248]

>>10638224
T. Tough guy Janiter

[Anonymous No.10638620]

>>10636840
To absorb it, or because you enjoy it.

[Anonymous No.10638649]

>>10636840
books are not simply to gain knowledge.
they are to experience immersion in a secondary world. they are entertainment. you can re-read a book and experience at least a fraction (or perhaps more than a fraction) of the original entertainment you sucked off the author for.

rereading can even be academically useful in that you will be more familiar with the work and make better arguments about it.

[Anonymous No.10638660]

>>10636840
I’ve only re-read a few books, but I’d like to do it more. You can discovered thing you previously missed or flat out change your opinion about some aspects. It’s fun.

[Anonymous No.10639893]

I think it can be beneficial for some books. Henry James is a master of this. He contradicts himself in his books which forces the reader to make decisions about what is perceived. a second read-through of one of his stories can make it feel completely different.

[Anonymous No.10639905]

>dentally, I use the word reader very loosely. Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. And I shall tell you why. When we read a book for the first time the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation. When we look at a painting we do not have to move our eyes in a special way even if, as in a book, the picture contains elements of depth and development. The element of time does not really enter in a first contact with a painting. In reading a book, we must have time to acquaint ourselves with it. We have no physical organ (as we have the eye in regard to a painting) that takes in the whole picture and then can enjoy its details. But at a second, or third, or fourth reading we do, in a sense, behave towards a book as we do towards a painting. However, let us not confuse the physical eye, that monstrous masterpiece of evolution, with the mind, an even more monstrous achievement. A book, no matter what it is—a work of fiction or a work of science (the boundary line between the two is not as clear as is generally believed)—a book of fiction appeals first of all to the mind. The mind, the brain, the top of the tingling spine, is, or should be, the only instrument used upon a book

[Anonymous No.10639906]

>>10636840
Reading is rereading.

[Anonymous No.10640059]

>>10636840
I reread books because I'm too lazy to write notes desu.

[Anonymous No.10641433]

>>10636879
I fear that rereading a book I like might erase the good feelings of the first reading and imprinto on me a kind of dullness, based on the impression that I already know what is going to happen.

[Anonymous No.10641487]

The only book I have ever reread in my life was Blood Meridian. And that was because I really just craved a western and have read all of the good ones at this point.

Ended up being a great experience, as reading it again a few years later I noticed that certain parts had a greater impact on me, particularly at the end when The Man meets the kid who is like he was at that age. That i had completely forgotten about that part (its not even mentioned in the wikipedia synopsis) and now it is the scene I think about more than the others is interesting to me.