Well,’said Ernest, ‘by some strange coincidence I know this story.’ Boddichek was not good at irony. ‘I knew that there was that possibility,’ he said, ‘but we have a great new way to treat it, and I thought you might want to reread it be...
The time spent rereading one book is one less new story I'll be exposed to in my life.
Lists of books we reread and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves.
The audiobooks I buy are never first-time reads - only rereadings of books I know well that I find intoxicating.
Not only did I avoid speaking of Salinger; I resisted thinking about him. I did not reread his letters to me. The experience had been too painful.
I do reread, kind of obsessively, partly for the surprise of how the same book reads at a different point in life, and partly to have the sense of returning to an old friend.
I never reread what I've written. I'm far too afraid to feel ashamed of what I've done.
Usually when I read something, first of all I'm looking for the story and then when I reread it, I'm sort of checking every part of it to see if every scene is necessary.
My definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure.
I think poetry is the only domain where a writer you like can truly be said to influence you, because you read and reread a poem so many times that it simply drills itself into your head.
I've reread 'The Secret Garden' every year as an adult. I have a battered copy on my bookshelf - it's really quite a mess! The experience of reading the novel keeps deepening for me.
Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who you are is true enough, but I'd know you better if you told me what you reread.
I highlight everything I find interesting, and then type out everything I've highlighted, and then print out everything I've typed, and reread these printed notes as often as possible.
I recently reread an article of mine written in 1964, and I think it is still valid. There is not much difference. Many of the items on the agenda 37 years ago are still there.
The things I keep going back to, rereading, maybe they say more about me as a reader than about the books. Love in the Time of Cholera, Pale Fire.
Yet when books have been read and reread, it boils down to the horse, his human companion, and what goes on between them.
Saepa stilum vertas, iterum quae digna legi sint scripturas. (Turn the stylus [to erase] often if you would write something worthy of being reread.)
The ultimate luxury is to reread: to revisit a book to see how time has treated it, how memory has distorted it, or how my own passing years have cast a new light on it.
I can no more reread my own books than I can watch old home movies or look at snapshots of myself as a child. I wind up sitting on the floor, paralyzed by grief and nostalgia.
Many books have mattered enormously to my life and work. 'David Copperfield' by Charles Dickens would be one of several contenders for 'most influential.' I first read it at 13 and have reread it dozens of times since.
I don't often reread my own books, unless I am going into another in the series and need to refresh my mood when originating the concept.
