How often do you reread books and why?

I'm coming to suspect that I'm something of an outlier among book lovers in this respect, in that I hardly ever do, so I'm curious to see if there's a general consensus?

 

Usually I re-read the book like weeks or days after because I want to read other books so when I re-read them again, I won't remember a lot about the story and reading it would be like reading a new story.

 

Very rarely, there's just too many new books to read.

 

Depends.

I had to wait a year for a new patricia brigs book to come out (maybe longer..i dont remember, i just knew i had to wait a while). Before it came out, i decided to reread the series up to that point. I do that with streaming series too. I'll rewatch a the previous season before the new one comes out if its been a while.

There are 2 other series that i reread occasionally because i love the characters and the story.
I feel like each time i read it, i focus on a different thing that i didnt focus on before

 

Good point. I'll have to reread Game of Thrones if the next book is ever published.

 

I tend to re-read in parts, sometimes for my own study (word choice, style, how-on-earth-do-you-elevate-a-simple-sentence-to-a-standard-that-good, etc.), sometimes because I remember that bit in the book where my favourite character/dream role of all time got like a 3 page introduction before he even started speaking.

I don't really get the time to re-read and read new books (as in actually ancient ones, it's just that I haven't read them yet), which can be a massive pain. But what I do instead for re-reading is that whenever I have menial tasks to do in my main work, I'll listen to an audiobook (currently LOTR and The Silmarillion again) as a way of still being able to pay attention to the story I want to read, but only because I don't have the time to work, do all my other stuff, and then read properly (i.e. the whole book from front to back, not just snippets) later.

Maybe when I'm gigging I'll have more time to read. It'll be that or heroin. To be honest, I just want to be that one guy who sits backstage going 'oooohh no thank you' to all that drugs and alcohol stuff and 'i'll just have a cup of tea instead, if you would be so kind, please and thank you'. Imagine Bilbo Baggins being a rockstar. Just like that.

Back to the question. I try to, as often as I can!

 

I hardly ever do either, in fact I'm struggling to remember which ones I have read more than once. Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Vonnegut's Mother Night. When I was a kid, at least some of the Harry Potters, probably. Honestly the driving factors in whether I re-read a book seem to be "I already own it" and "I'm really bored".

Which is too bad, because I've gotten a lot out of re-reading. Especially Invisible Man, I remember getting a lot out of it I hadn't the first time around. Can't have it all, I guess. Unless a nuclear war destroys civilization, then I'll have enough time to finally read as much as I want (until I break my glasses, of course)...

 

Well, this habit is something that has increased with age and time. There are classics, the timeless ones whose relevance and importance increase with time and opens up pandora's box much later in life. It could be because of limited worldview and objective of reading previously. But when life creates unique situations and purposes, the need to reread could become a necessity. I've answered the reason for rereading Murakami's Wild Sheep Chase in the 'currently reading thread'. Similarly, works like Animal Farm, 1984, The Plague, and many other novels across genres resonate with personalities and situations at a later period.

 

I reread books for the same reason I'll play music I've heard before. I'm not the kind of person who'll listen to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony or the Beatles' "Abbey Road" and say, "OK. I've heard it. Liked it. Won't play it again."

I'll put a good book away and reread it maybe two, or five, or ten years later. Not only do I want to play the music again, but I've found that a good book will be sometimes perceived in a different way as I age. Or it transports me back to a person I used to be, when I read the book for the first time.

Each book presents an environment I want to go and experience again, like people going back to Disneyland or Yosemite or Manhattan time after time, or keeping in touch with people you've known.

Books I reread: Thomas Berger's Little Big Man, Mario Puzo's Godfather, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and lots of Kurt Vonnegut. I also recently reread most of Ian Flemings's James Bond books and Ellis Peters's Brother Cadfael mysteries, just to see how they vary from the screen versions.

 

I did once, accidentally.

 

Depends on the book. I have 1-2 books that I like to re-read a few times because I really like the author´s writing style or because I have read the book during an important part of my life.
But besides these few exceptions, rarely if not never. There are a lot of books on my to do list and it would take ages to get to them if I re-read a lot of books

 

I have reread some children's books once a year since 1964. They never get old, whether I am reading them to myself, my children, or my grandchildren. I've read other books dozens of times, and I've never found that rereading prevented me from reading plenty of new books. Why do I reread? Lots of reasons: because I love the story, the rhythm of the language, because I'm in the mood for a particular feeling and know this or that book will give it to me, because I'll notice something new in a beloved story that somehow I missed in the first ten readings, because I can't find anything else that appeals to me more. Mostly I allow a few years to elapse between readings, but once or twice I've read something so amazing that I turned the last page, returned to the first page and read the whole thing again.

 

The only books I’ve re-read are the Red Dwarf novels, and I re-read them for exactly the same reason I rewatch the tv series.

 

I reread for 2 main reasons—for enjoyment, and to learn.

In order to do a movie analysis it's necessary to be thoroughly familiar with the movie, meaning you need to have seen it many times. At least a half dozen, and you'll be watching it many more while doing the analysis. This is because when you first see it you get only the surface level—the story and characters etc. In order to see beneath that to the structure and whatever tricks the director might have had up his sleeve, you need to totally desensitize yourself to that emotional surface so you can examine the structure underneath, find any important motifs, examine visuals for thematic material etc.

I think it takes more viewings to get past the dazzling surface of a movie than a book, because a movie has moving visuals and music and sound—it can immediately affect you on an emotional level powerfully. A book can do some of that, but not as directly or strongly. And you do need to get under the story level to discover whatever else is going on.

But I think reading a story just a few times can get your there, faster than with a movie.

I've re-read nonfiction books in order to absorb and learn from them better, and I do the same with fiction sometimes too, but not nearly as much. Though even when I re-read something for pleasure it still helps me understand the underlying stuff better.

 

Whenever I can, I reread books and short stories because I want to study narration and natural (or close-to-natural) dialogue.

 

Honestly, never. I don't think I ever have. There are simply too many new books and authors I want to read. I do YouTube book reviews and like to re-read excerpts quite often though.

 

I confess that there's another book I re-read a lot: Seabiscuit By Laura Hillenbrand. I just re-read it last weekend and was astonished at the fact that it was just as thrilling to read now as it was in years past. FWIW, I think that it's a classic among sportswriting, and the chapter on the match race between Seabiscuit and War Admiral is the very best piece of sportswriting I've ever read.

It's a model of non-fiction writing: heavily researched, with unforgettable characters and descriptions of races that put you right in the stands and on the horses.

 

I do not like to reread books, because I always want to read something new, learn something new and enjoy it. I often reread various scientific or popular science literature, especially when I collaborate with Edubirdie and write various studies. From fiction, I only reread Fight Club and the Count of Monte Cristo twice, since these are my favorite works.

 

I only reread books that have meant something to me. It's becoming ever more rare.
But I usually work like this:
1, I read it for the story
2, I read it for the details
Example, Tolkien, Lord of the Rings. I couldn't slow down my reading because I was so interested in what would happen next, so I had to read it again to make sense of all the details I'd missed on the first reading.

 

I tend to read fiction and then non fiction...but when I come across a good fiction writer I will often start another straight after and then go back to my one after the other.....

 

I like to re-read some books, it helps to uncover little details and subtle foreshadowing that can be missed on the first read (I sometimes read too quickly and miss these things).

 

Sometimes I just want to go 'there' again! The best books are the ones that get me totally re-immersed, same as the first time I read them. Sometimes knowing 'what happened' actually enriches the story, and certainly helps me acquire some writing skills. I'm more aware, after reading the second time, of the overall story structure, and how the clever writer guides me to the end.

It's like @JLT said ..re-reading a book is like listening to music more than once. Except for me, it works slightly differently. When I find a piece of music I love, I listen to it over and over and over again sometimes for months on end. Yet in later years, I often don't listen to that same music again at all. I do move on. But with books, I don't re-read them right away. It may be a year—or years—before I pick them up again.

To be honest, as a young person I re-read books more often than I do now. But back then access to books was more restricted than today. Today I can buy books easily without moving from my computer chair, and in the case of Kindle, can start reading new ones right away. So I guess that ease of access to new writing figures in as well.

Right now? I recently re-read Lord of the Rings. For the umpteenth time. But I used to read it twice a year, and this is the first time I've re-read it in about 10 years. Still a damn fine read. (And I still can't stand most of the songs in it!) But I did enjoy Tom Bombadil more than usual, for some reason.

As for music? Right now I'm really immersed in Si Barron's CDs ...both his more recent traditional song ones, and his earlier self-penned CDs. I almost NEED this music every day, just to get me settled in. I may move on, eventually ...and I do listen to other music as well ...but I've been listening to Si's music nearly every day for the past year, and I'm no way at all getting tired of listening to it. Maybe his is the music which will break the mold for me.

 

Good to see you hanging around, jannert! As for Tom Bombadil, I think that his attraction to me was that he was in a realm of his own, completely unaffected by the world outside his domain, and impervious to all its charms and faults. The ring had no power over him. In that sense, he was like Adam before the Fall, without sin, living harmoniously with nature, completely oblivious to the world's charms.

Tolkien's inclusion of Tom and Goldberry in the host of people who helped Frodo and his crew might have been his way of saying that we need people like them as much as we need wizards and elves and dwarves. Peter Jackson's deletion of the characters was perhaps necessary to keep the running length of the film down, but it was unfortunate just the same.

And without Tom and Goldberry, we would not have had the Tim Benzedrine and Hashberry characters in Bored of the Rings. So there's that, too.

 

There have been a few times that I went back to a book that I never finished and re-read the things I'd already read, seeing if I could get into it when I was previously unable to. Other than that, I don't re-read books. Even if it's a book I really like, they are very time consuming, and I have too long a list of new books to read.