First Monday Book Day

Monday Book Day: Re-Reads

80 Comments

Apologies for missing the first Monday.

I finished the Great Vonnegut (Re)-Read of 2015 by finishing his last novel, Timequake, right at the end of November.  When I decided to read all of Vonnegut's novels, Timequake was the one that I was most interested in re-reading.  I read it in 1997 when it was first published and I was in 10th grade.  And I don't think I got it.  I had always been perplexed when people have good things to say about the book because I thought it was my least favorite book of his.  So, I was very interested in what my reaction would be to it this time around, moreso than any of the other books.  (One nice thing about that being that it served as a very nice motivator to keep the project going, I had to get to Timequake to see how it had changed for me).

This time around, I loved it.  I'm not going to argue that it's a great novel.  It's half of a novel at best.  But if you spend time with Vonnegut, especially post-Breakfast of Champions Vonnegut, this book is a near perfect epilogue to his career.  Through this whole year I got the perspective that I was missing back in 1997.  The payoff to the project was pretty good.

This summer, I got in a friendly argument with my Dad about re-reading books.  He refuses to do it, using the "there's too many books I haven't read out there and not nearly enough time to read them all" argument.  He could not understand why I would choose to re-read all of Vonnegut's novels or start The Wheel of Time over from the beginning when the final three books started coming out.  So I went back and looked through my reading spreadsheets and found that I really don't re-read very much.  I feel like that's the majority opinion, most people feel like they don't read enough and so why spend time reading something again?  But the effect of my Vonnegut re-read is making me question that a little bit.  There are books that I've said I'd like to go back and spend some more time with (2666 is the one that leaps to mind), but I don't know that I ever would have.  Now I'm reconsidering a little bit.  Maybe that will be a project for a future year.  Re-read one book per month that I've wanted to revisit?  Could be interesting.

So, do you ever re-read?  Never re-read?  What books would you revisit if the feeling struck you?

80 thoughts on “Monday Book Day: Re-Reads”

  3. I have re-read a few books. One because I forgot I already owned it and it took me about a third of the story before I was sure enough I had read it.

    More deliberately I read the Dune series twice and Dune itself thrice. With complex stories it's not until the second read-through that I begin to really understand things. I might try A Song of Ice and Fire again but that's a lot of words to read for a story that might not end.

    1. I've started The Sun Also Rises at least three times when I was a kid. It was around the house, but at the age I was reading the book, I had no real frame of reference for the characters and I hated it so much I think my mind convinced itself that I didn't read it. I think I finished it the last time, but I wouldn't bet on it.

  4. Great topic. I'm gonna have to give this some thought, as I've reread plenty, but putting into words will be a little tougher.

  6. I've read multiple times:
    A Song of Ice and Fire - 3 times the first 4 books, and twice Dance with Dragons. I will probably read them again when if the 6th book comes out.
    Harry Potter - I've read the first few 2 or 3 times. I'd like to read through them again, but the last time I attempted it, I didn't have the drive to get through Chamber
    Where The Red Fern Grows - read twice as a kid.
    Walking Dead Compendium 2 - I read the first one only once, but that's when the show was airing the episodes that related to that part of the comics. I had to go through the second compendium again to remind myself of what's coming up in the latest episodes.

    1. I'm reading the Harry Potter books for the first time - currently about 2/3 of the way through Order of the Phoenix. Seeing as how it took me this long to get to them for the first time, I don't think I'm likely to re-read. That being said, I'm really enjoying them, more so the further along I get.

      1. I am also reading them for the first time right now. My wife has read them already, but we're reading them together now (separate ebooks), then watching the movies after we read the books. On Chamber of Secrets now.

        I'll be glad to understand more pop culture references. Mostly, it's a fun world. Gotta say though the scoring system for Quidditch is ridiculous.

        1. Ha, that reminds me, I was walking on the campus of a local university, when I saw a bunch of students playing quidditch on the quad.

        2. My oft-delayed reading was finally provoked into action by a HP movie marathon of sorts back in Aug-Sep. I found that many of my wife's answers to questions led with, "Well, in the books..." and she's read the entire series at least three times, so I took the plunge.

          You're right - it is a fun world. I really like additional character development and backstories that there isn't time for in the movies. Also agree, the Quidditch scoring is curious at best.

          1. It's so contrived. All scores multiples of ten? I don't know of a single actual sport like that.
            At least in Tennis, the 15-point thing is instead 15-30-40.

    2. I too re-read the Wheel sequence in anticipation of the last three. I've read the entirety of Herbert's Dune series several times through. And the LOTR twice.

      About five years ago I reacquired as many of the core Camber of Culdi books as I could locate and reread them. Also some of the Deryni stuff and some of the Darkover stuff. I re-read a few of the C.S. Lewis Narnia books when the kids were young enough, but they were such dreck that I stopped rather than completely ruin the childhood memories. Conversely, re-reading Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising series did not ruin the magic for me (although they were much more deliberate and less actiony than I had remembered).

      Somehow, other than Dune, I have not been drawn to rereading much space opera. But the fantasy stuff seems to work for me.

      2. I've reread a ton of books in just reading at night to young Runner daughter. I think the LOTR movie series damaged any chance of rereading those again. I think the Chalker Well World series has gotten a couple rereads. I would love to reread the Aubrey/Maturin series again, but that would tie me up for quite a while, so I'm hesitant to commit

        I enjoyed the Camber series initially, but things petered out and I didn't get any payoff from it.

  7. I read it in 1997 when it was first published and I was in 10th grade.
    Oh, d@mn.

    Currently reading Jack McDevitt's brand new book Thunderbird, sequel to Ancient Shores. I don't find these books as interesting as his Alex Benedict series, for example, but it again takes place in NE NoDak and is a first contact book.

  8. I found a Redditor whose short stories I really like. Her username is Luna_Lovewell. She's got a collected works book available for $2.99, and I figured I could go through and read them all for free on Reddit, but that's dishonest. Best $3 book I've gotten in a long time. My favorite so far is "Vampire in the Zombie Apocalypse". It's in eight parts (one of her longer ones so far). This link is to part 8, which in turn has links to parts 1-7 at the top. If you liked that and want to support her, here's the link to her ebook.

  9. I have found a book for AMR. It is entitled How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers. It looks to have been published in 1907, and it concludes with an apology from the author. I'll include a sample page below; the full thing can be viewed here.

  10. November was a month for finishing off long-standing projects.

    Bubbles by Peter Sloterdijk.

    I read this with the English department here at my university. It was intimidating as all heck to be in a room with all those very good, critical readers who know the whole history of philosophy and all that. But it was fun at the same time. Next semester they're reading The Sublime Object of Ideology by Slavoj Zizek, and they invited me back, so that will be another intersting thing.

    But about Bubbles. It wasn't too difficult to read and I think I stayed with the author throughout most of it. I'm tempted to continue on to Globes (the second of Sloterdijk's Spheres trilogy). Which says something. This book puts lots of ideas on the table, almost all of them concerning the idea of close two-person relationships (mother-child, God-Adam, etc.) The thing I most struggled with is the rejection of the Enlightenment. But beyond that, Sloterdijk writes engagingly enough for the deep territory, and his ability to supplement the writing with interesting images keep the book moving along.

    Unstuck in Time: A Journey Through Kurt Vonnegut's Life and Novels by Gregory Sumner,
    The Vonnegut Effect by Jerome Klinkowitz,
    Sanity Plea: Schizophrenia in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut by Lawrence Broer

    All of these were books I was reading as I read through the 14 novels of Vonnegut. As I finished Timequake, I finished these. The Klinkowitz book was my favorite. It focused on what made Vonnegut different and engaging to readers and observed his development from the early more science fiction bent of his writing to the grappling with the demons of Dresden and war and isolation that dominated his later work. The Broer book was very interesting, but (as with any book with such a singular focus and a broad sample) often seemed to be reaching to make connections to his ideas of schizophrenia and how they appear in these novels. The Sumner book I disliked. Too much like a book report, considering I had just read the books he was writing about, it didn't add much.

    Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut
    Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut

    That's all 14 novels! I considered reading some of his short story collections, but my list is long enough as is, and that wasn't really ever the goal.

    Chasing the Santa Fe Ring by Brian Caffey
    Romance of a Little Village Girl by Cleofas Jaramillo

    I took a class on the history of New Mexico this semester, and that included assignments based off of these books. Both interesting and both probably worth a read if you're interested in territorial New Mexico (which I can now tell you lasted from 1848 to 1912).

    1. I considered reading some of his short story collections

      They're such quick reads though! I'll have to go through my notes and see if one of them really stands out.

    3. I'm pretty sure I read Timequake during the summer when I was in college. The book was published in September 1997, so it must have been during the summer of 1998. I'd read several other Vonnegut titles by that point--most notably Slaughterhouse-Five. I don't remember many of the details, but I recall the book being satisfyingly Vonnegut-esque.

    4. Can you say more about Bubbles or point me in the direction of something that might do so? Your description here makes me interested for when I finish IJ (uh... 45 pages in? Haven't read for a while. I misplaced it accidentally for a time.).

      1. OK, let's see if I've got this right:

        Sloterdijk is picking up where he feels Heidegger left off in Being and Time. His main thesis is that the human experience is a series of spheres formed to encapsulate "close relationships" (in the first book he looks at intimate biune bubbles as his focus - like mother-child, child-placenta, God-human, etc.) He doesn't say this outright because it's only the first volume of a three-volume sequence, but he implies that the modern age has served to puncture a lot of these spheres through the increasing self-absorption of people brought about by technology. Sloterdijk appears to blame a lot of this on the Enlightenment. Many of his examples of bubbles come from medieval theology and pre-enlightenment philosophy/art. He obliquely references other modern philosophers (Heidegger, Lacan, Deleuze are the ones I remember) and occasionally takes swipes at them (usually done pretty humorously).

        There are a whole bunch of artwork and drawing examples scattered throughout the book, which is pretty cool in that it makes it less of a slog and occasionally indicates some of his points very well.

        One thing that helped me quite a bit is an interview of his I read, where he says that anything he writes is a work in progress not to be taken seriously. Probably an overstatement, but if you're looking for thoroughly researched arguments with citations and point by point analysis, this is not your treatise.

        1. he says that anything he writes is a work in progress not to be taken seriously. Probably an overstatement,

          If he's a good philosopher, that's not an overstatement. There's a reason I like to say "philosofickle" instead of "philosophical."

          I am going to have to check this out. I should probably revisit Heidegger too.

      2. Also, I looked for some online resources while I was reading, but didn't find much. It was only published in English in 2011 and the whole trilogy is not available in English yet.

  11. I just finished Go Set A Watchman. It was a giant mess: pointless flashbacks, shifting narrator, ridiculously pandering moral - it had it all!

    1. I really haven't heard much good about that book and yet somehow it keeps showing up on end of the year lists. (It won the goodreads choice award for fiction, for example). I don't think I'll ever pick it up.

    2. I've managed to avoid reading it so far but I have a scholarly curiosity about it that may have to be indulged at some point.

  12. Books read that were not part of long-standing projects.

    Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill

    Halloween read. I heard this was terrifying, but instead it seemed like Hill was trying too hard in a lot of places. It was fine, but not anything I'd really recommend. I liked Horns better.

    Half of What They Carried Flew Away by Andrea Rexilius

    Poetry. The collection built on itself really nicely. By the end of it, I kind of wanted to go back and see how that had been done (re-reading synergy!)

    Beowulf translated by JRR Tolkien

    First time I had ever read Beowulf. I actually very much enjoyed the epic, but all the supplemental material was a bit much for me.

    The Only Woman in the Room by Eileen Pollack

    Pollack was one of the first women to pursue a B.S. physics degree at Yale. She got her degree and then became a writer and she writes here about how that happened. It made me think about how I advise all of my students (especially with regards to encouragement) and what are the obstacles that are set in their way without any real acknowedgement.

  13. Most books I read, I read multiple times.

    Caveat SelectShow

    I'm re-watching Moribito with CER. I think that's similar. After EAR learned the TV-14 rating, I acquiesced to following the basic rule in our house, but I helped CER find the workaround: you can watch a movie (or show) if you've read the book.
    I read that book myself (just once through), and I liked it quite a bit. At the same time, I found the changes from the book to the TV series made the story richer and more satisfying while explaining less (that's good: leaving more to mystery).
    I'm disappointed to learn that lack of commercial response led the US rightsholder to cease translation of the books after the second one. (The first book corresponds to the television program, but I wonder if elements of the later stories were brought in to flesh out the story further.)

    CER is now confronted with two versions of a story that don't perfectly line up. "That's not what happened!" she says. I say, no: none of it happened.
    I wonder what she'll think of two much more different versions of Fullmetal Alchemist (if we ever get there).

  14. I used to be more of a rereader than I am now. Books I'm certain I've read more than once: The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle, various Narnia books by C. S. Lewis, Sula by Toni Morrison, probably The Black Stallion by Walter Farley. After reading an excerpt of Walden in 10th grade, I decided I should read the whole thing every summer. A few years after that, bogged down in the dense sentences, I decided that I was being ridiculous and ended that tradition.

    I'm not against rereading now so much as I feel short on time. But once I make it through Infinite Jest (I'm nearing page 100!), perhaps it would be a good idea to go back to something familiar.

    2. Books I'd definitely like to reread at some point: Lolita and Anna Karenina. The latter I read over the summer at some point while in high school and while I got something out of it, I'd be curious to see what more I might get from it at this point.

  15. I read Far from the Madding Crowd every year for about six or seven years. Now it's been at least that long since I last read it.

    For a while, re-reading was part of the job description. There were a couple books (Matterhorn, Gods Go Begging) that remained a constant in the class, while others rotated in & out. It was nice to come back to one after a year off, just to see how it fit with how the class unfolded that semester.

    With leisure reading, it depends. I've probably re-read more Murakami than anyone else. Right now I'm re-reading The Hobbit for the first time as an adult. It's been interesting on a number of levels, the best being there are times when I can still hear Pops' phrasing when he read it to me in elementary school.

    1. FW and I had to read Far from the Madding Crowd for Academic Decathlon in HS. We both hated it. In general, I don't like much Victorian literature.

    2. the best being there are times when I can still hear Pops' phrasing when he read it to me in elementary school.

      This is so cool.

  16. I've thought about this topic with movies, too. I feel like I should be more intentional about re-watching or re-reading movies/TV/books. I haven't re-read many books, but I re-read To Kill A Mockingbird and Anna Karenina and I liked the both quite a bit on the second read as well. It seems like a bit of a wasted opportunity to consume so much content and have favorite content and not revisit that favorite content. As I get older, I feel like I want to spend more time doing the things that I love rather than just doing a lot of things.

    Most of my reading lately has been guidebooks in preparation for future travel. I'm hoping to make progress on Moby Dick over the holidays.

  17. Having given this some thought today, I'd agree with Ubes when he writes "it seems like a bit of a wasted opportunity to consume so much content and have favorite content and not revisit that favorite content."

    I spent a huge chunk of college on a particular professor's "100 Great Books" list, that was fairly typical of such lists, with some added diversity and individual selections. Most of my post-law school reading was also from this list, either consuming ones I hadn't read or revisiting ones I hadn't given enough attention. I found my rereads were often very rewarding. Occasionally unnecessary, but overall, a good idea. I just kept folding in re-reads every third our forth book, and tackling new stuff from the list, such that basically I was either working my way through the list or reworking through it, or reading books from authors on the list.

    My reading world has expanded over the past few years. I was getting to enough of the books on the lists that I just didn't enjoy, and had found enough footholds for things that I did enjoy, that I became ready to branch out. I still like to reread those favorites, but not quite as frequently. I'm sure someday I'll return to that point where I want to do more things I love than lots of things, but I'm definitely in a "lots of things" phase right now.

      1. I had to read Don Quixote for Spanish class senior year of high school (also La Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes). If I ever go back there, it will have to be an English translation.

  18. I've re-read a number of books:

    Lord of the Rings 6 or 7 times
    East of Eden 4 or 5 times
    On the Road 3 or 4 times

    A bunch at least twice.

  19. Not a lot of re-reads for me, but I know I've been through Crime and Punishment, Hunger, and The Trial at least a couple times each. Well...that's a depressing trio.

    1. I was somehow able to avoid a second read of The Trial. I suspect I agree a lot, lot more with what that book is trying to say now than I did in undergrad.

      Also, C&P isn't so much depressing in the long run, right?

  21. I've read Where the Red Fern Grows 3 times and various other fiction books from my childhood several times (mostly baseball books). Otherwise, I've reread a couple Koontz books, though I only have kept one in my library.

    Don't think I've reread any books on the more academic side

    1. I think we've talked about Where the Red Fern Grows before--the end of that book traumatized me horridly when I was in sixth grade, and it's definitely one I don't ever expect to reread. Also in that category is The Red Pony. (Apparently sixth grade was the year of traumatic books.)

      Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is another one, although I was a few years older when I read that one.

      2. I read Red Fern over Christmas break in 2nd Grade. (or was it 3rd Grade? No, I think it was 2nd because I read the Yearling in 3rd and the Jack London two in 4th and I definitely read them all in that school because I was in a different building in 5th grade.)
        Dad got sick of my lazing around doing nothing, said I had to finish the book before I could... watch TV again?
        It took me 2 days. I don't think it traumatized me in the least. The thing about how to catch coons with tin foil stuck in a hole in a log stuck with me though. I should re-read that part again.

  22. I know I re-read LotR stuff before the movies came out. Except I stopped after two books because I just didn't feel like continuing.

    I will probably reread the first six Thomas Covenant books what with three four more books having been written these past years. (Though I read those books over two decades ago. Who knows, maybe I'll hate them now.)

    I reread the first three or four books of the Gap Cycle (another Stephen R. Donaldson series) when the final book came out because I had made the mistake of starting that series before it was finished. (I vowed never to make that mistake again, then I just finished reading Sand by Hugh Howey. Though I'll admit a Hugh Howey book probably isn't so complicated that it will require me rereading it before the next book arrives.)

    Other than that…I haven't reread much. I think if I read just a little bit more I would be willing to reread with some frequency. I have many other time sucks for my limited free time, though, like TV, movies, games, etc. So it's OK.

    1. I read all the Thomas Covenant books in college when they came out, but I had no qualms trading those books at the used book store. They really didn't do all that much for me in the long run.

  23. The only book I can think I actively thought "I should read that again" was Brave New World. Still one of the most formative books I've ever read.

  24. I'm a big re-reader. LoTR (and Tolkien's other works, many of which are great and I wish they were longer/complete) and collections of Hemingway and Dostoevsky are the main culprits. I've read most of Vonnegut a couple of times. I also have well worn copies of the Aeneid, Odyssey, The Histories, and a bunch of greek plays. Oh and a while ago my mom gave me the collected works of Kipling that I haven't made it through, but there are several sections I've covered multiple times instead of reading something new.

    I read more new than reread, but I revisit a lot of things while I'm reading the new stuff.

          1. Had I been offered, I'd have taken the Crime. but not the Punishment. Its a pretty white night here so I'm the idiot writing this note from the underground.

            Aside: It is always a bit weird when your parents move and you are staying in another not your room.

  25. Wow... Re-reads... I'm prolly missing some but these come to mind:
    Crime and Punishment - F. Dostoyevsky
    The Idiot - F. Dostoyevsky
    The Brothers Karamazov - F. Dostoyevsky
    Fathers and Sons - I. Turgenev
    Sketches from a Hunter's Album - I. Turgenev
    Heart of Darkness - J. Conrad
    Typhoon - J. Conrad
    The Plague - A. Camus
    The Stranger - A. Camus
    The Blue Nile - A. Moorehead
    The Epic Fast - M. Gandhi
    Aubrey-Maturin series - P. O'Brian
    Sherlock Holmes short stories - A. C. Doyle

Comments are closed.