Posted: Jan 16, 2023 12:24 pm
Spearthrower wrote:Evolving wrote:
Obviously I've read this before...
I have to admit that this is a question that I've always had for the people of these book threads: do you never re-read books? I read books over and over - if it's good enough to finish reading it all the way through once, it's good enough for me to read it again a year or two later, and again a year or two later than that, and so on. Some books I've read dozens of times. Any book list I made would inevitably have multiple instances of the same books.
Yes, I do some rereading. My default books for a nice revisit are the Culture SF novels of Iain M. Banks, the Flashman novels by George MacDonald Fraser and any of Tim Moore's hilarious travelogues. The SF novels that got made into the Netflix series 'Altered Carbon' have also had a few rereads.
Of course, in my academic reading I am always going back and looking over sections and chapters from key books and papers.
I'm stepping back from the 50 book challenge a bit this year because I realized I was kind of racing for the finish line a bit and not being as diligent and focused as I should. I took a look at some of the books in my library and realized that although I had read them, the contents were a bit vague. (In some cases zero recollection!) So, I'm bashing away at selected chapters from selected books. Last weekend I read a chapter in one book on a fairly abstract linguistic topic. Finished it and immediately went back to the beginning and re-read it. Then went back and skimmed/scanned it for a third time and took notes and underlined key quotes.
Oh, and while we are on the topic of rereads, my bragging rights come into play regarding Joyce's Ulysses: Three times cover to cover over about ten years. Got funnier with each reread.
As the (probably apocryphal) anecdote goes.
"What did you do in the great war Mr. Joyce?"
"I wrote Ulysses. What did you do?"