Literature

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Do you reread books? (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Do you reread books or are you done with them once you’ve read them?

I like to reread books sometimes! Rereading is especially good if I’ve just finished something heavy or intense; I can follow that up with something that I’ve enjoyed before so it doesn’t take too much effort and I can have a bit of a break. I also don’t have the greatest retention for what I read, so even if I’ve read something before there’s no way I’ll remember everything. And there are certain books that are comforting and cozy and those are great to reread when I want that kind of mood.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, but rarely enough that the instances stand out in my mind. I've read LOTR a couple of times, The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Martian by Andy Weir, a textbook called Art and Visual Perception because I am a fucking nerd. It's very likely that I'll read Midnight in Chernobyl again, Spillover by David Quammen (predicted the Covid pandemic 10 years early!), and anything by Erik Larson or James Gleick. Those books are great.

But LOTR is the only fiction I've ever read more than once

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Midnight in Chernobyl was so good! A good companion to that one is Voices from Chernobyl which is first-hand accounts from the people who were there. It’s haunting and viscerally honest and an excellent read.

I loved Spillover too, though monkeys and bats make me much more uneasy now after reading it.