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Revisiting
Jan. 24th, 2012 09:35 pmI have an odd relationship with rereading.
I am a very (okay, occasionally pathologically) frugal person. I don't like spending money on myself, or wasting money, so buying books has often been difficult - it's hard to convince myself to spend money on consumables. Rereading makes this at least a little more reasonable; I can justify the expense more easily if I know I'm going to read the book more than once.
Plus there's also just the joy that comes from diving back into a favorite story, the comfort and happiness from favorite passages and turns of phrase, the excitement of rediscovering subplots and details that you had forgotten, and the changed perspective that comes from looking at the progress of a story when you already know how it turns out - or from reading the same tale at different points in your life, and finding different lessons, touchstones, and characters to identify with by doing so. Not to mention, rereading is safe. You already know that you're going to like what you read.
On the other hand... that's part of the problem right there. Rereading is safe. It's an experience you've already had. And every time I pick up an old favorite book to read it again, there's a little voice in the back of my head asking me if maybe I shouldn't be wasting my time like that, and if maybe I really ought to be experiencing something new instead. That I'm being lazy and incurious and somehow slovenly, staying in my little tried-and-true rut, and that there's something indescribably more noble and admirable about trying new things and reading new books.
Of course, that hasn't stopped me from sticking to a pure list of rereads so far this year. Apparently what I need right now more than anything, at least in my fiction, is comfort and safety. I'll try new things in a little while. When the rest of my world is settled and safe. Right now, I think I hear the last chapter of "Memoirs of A Geisha" calling my name. Again.
There are worse fates.
I am a very (okay, occasionally pathologically) frugal person. I don't like spending money on myself, or wasting money, so buying books has often been difficult - it's hard to convince myself to spend money on consumables. Rereading makes this at least a little more reasonable; I can justify the expense more easily if I know I'm going to read the book more than once.
Plus there's also just the joy that comes from diving back into a favorite story, the comfort and happiness from favorite passages and turns of phrase, the excitement of rediscovering subplots and details that you had forgotten, and the changed perspective that comes from looking at the progress of a story when you already know how it turns out - or from reading the same tale at different points in your life, and finding different lessons, touchstones, and characters to identify with by doing so. Not to mention, rereading is safe. You already know that you're going to like what you read.
On the other hand... that's part of the problem right there. Rereading is safe. It's an experience you've already had. And every time I pick up an old favorite book to read it again, there's a little voice in the back of my head asking me if maybe I shouldn't be wasting my time like that, and if maybe I really ought to be experiencing something new instead. That I'm being lazy and incurious and somehow slovenly, staying in my little tried-and-true rut, and that there's something indescribably more noble and admirable about trying new things and reading new books.
Of course, that hasn't stopped me from sticking to a pure list of rereads so far this year. Apparently what I need right now more than anything, at least in my fiction, is comfort and safety. I'll try new things in a little while. When the rest of my world is settled and safe. Right now, I think I hear the last chapter of "Memoirs of A Geisha" calling my name. Again.
There are worse fates.
