Re-Reading.

As most of you probably know, I read a lot of books. For instance, last year I read 154 books (though admittedly only about 36 were physical books that I sat down and read and the others were audio books that I listened to while commuting or working or cooking or cleaning. You know, the joys of multi-tasking!).

I would say that many of the books I read are new books, either simply new to me (a first time read) or actually freshly published. I follow lots of book blogs and libraries on social media, and Goodreads is really good at sending out monthly notices about new books from authors you've read etc, so I am constantly seeing brand new books that look interesting and adding them to my To Read shelf on Goodreads. I've never watched Gilmore Girls all the way through, but I have seen episodes here and there and I remember catching an episode where Rory goes into a tizzy about how many books are published each day and how she'll never be able to read them all. Sometimes I think of that, and it's a sad thought. Even more sad is the fact that I probably won't even get a chance to read all of the books that I've added to that To Read shelf. Let's not talk about it.

It helps that sometime during or after college I gave myself permission to STOP reading books I don't like. Throughout my childhood, I'd follow through and finish every book I started even if it took me ages because they dragged on and didn't keep my attention. As I've gotten older and had less available free time, I've learned that nobody has time to suffer through books they don't like. And, more importantly, if you're wasting time on books you don't like, you're missing out on the possibility for books you love! That said, I admit that I still finish most books I start (also, confession: I have pretty low standards. I'm very easy to please and don't usually even care about bad writing. Soooo...yeah.) and rarely feel the need to put one down. A recent book that I started and just couldn't finish was "The Zookeeper's Wife." I picked up a copy of it years ago and have always wanted to read it- I was sure I would love it. With the movie coming out, I decided now was the time and pulled it off my alphabetized-by-author's-last-name bookshelf only to start reading and decide that I didn't like the book at all. Don't get me wrong; I still think I'll love the story and am totally planning on seeing the movie which I think I will enjoy. But the book was a total drag and I was struggling to read it after 25 pages. I think the author just got too bogged down in portraying the historical accuracy because it's a true story and she had access to pictures and journals and all sorts of primary evidence, and she presented it all in the book, at the expense of my interest. The movie will be able to show all that info rather than telling it all in excruciating detail, and I think I'll enjoy that more.

Anyway, with all the new books there are to read every single day, it can seem a little silly to re-read some. But I do it anyway. For instance, every year or so I like to read "Ella Enchanted." It's pretty much my favorite children's book of all time and I seriously read it like four or five times as a young person before I realized it was a Cinderella retelling (is that an embarrassing thing to admit? my point was just that it's SO well done and doesn't really fit into the cookie-cutter Cinderella format. I think Gail Carson Levine did a fabulous job with it!). I also like to re-read the Harry Potter books every few years because...well, it's self-explanatory, isn't it?

A few other books that I have re-read many times are "Bloomability" by Sharon Creech (she's probably my favorite children's book author, by the way), "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd, and all of Sarah Dessen and Megan McCafferty's books.

Then there's another type of re-reading. The kind where I pick up a book that I read years ago and loved but haven't read since and decide I want to refresh the details. It's happened a few times in recent years. When this happens, I usually find my experience reading the book the second time to be completely different than the first, which I find completely intriguing. An example would be that in high school I picked up a copy of "Mother Night" by Kurt Vonnegut and started reading it out loud to my friends in a British accent just to be a goof, and suddenly found that I was totally into the story and read the entire book over the course of the rest of the day. At the time, I'd never before heard of Kurt Vonnegut, and I absolutely loved "Mother Night" and promptly dove into the rest of his books. In college, I had to read "Mother Night" for a class, which I didn't mind since I considered it my favorite Kurt Vonnegut, but I found the book to be not nearly as beautiful and wholesome as I'd remembered. It was really weird. In five years or so, I'd had so much more exposure to the human condition that I no longer saw the actions of the main character as truly heroic and wonderful. It was more complicated, the character more complicated, than I'd realized upon my first reading at 15 or so. Or maybe I'd understood the complexities and simply not remembered them. I don't know, but while I still liked the book after the second reading, I was surprised by it.

Last weekend I picked up a copy of "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes and decided to read it for the first time in probably almost ten years (I don't remember exactly when I read it, but I know it was in high school). I know that I loved it the first time, and I remember the general premise of the story, but re-reading it has been very different from what I remembered. I think part of that is because a huge part of the book deals with the relationship the main character had with the world around him when he was a special needs child, and since the last time I read it I have personally spent a few years working directly with special needs children- if that wouldn't change my perspective on a story I don't know what would. But I think there's also just the component of being older, of understanding more about human nature, of considering how a character's actions compare with those of people I know in real life and with my own.

What I've learned is that as I live and learn and grow I can have a completely different interpretation of something than I had before. I know, this isn't an earth shattering revelation, but it still kind of baffles me. I think it has to do with the fact that despite being completely self-absorbed, teenagers (or at least me, as a teenager) don't actually understand themselves all that well. And the experience of reading is sort of a meta one, where you learn about yourself through stories and experiences of others. If you don't really know who you are, you might be blown away by a story, but it isn't going to fold into you the same way.

Anyway, that's just something I've been thinking about lately. I'm sure there are other books that I would get more out of if I re-read them now, and I'm sure there are books that I haven't read yet that I will enjoy more greatly if I read as an adult anyway.

Have any of you had a completely different experience with a book upon reading it a second (or third! Or more!) time? If so, what book? Are there books you think are important for me to read in my mid-twenties because I'll be able to relate to and understand them better now that I would have earlier? If so, drop me a comment!