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?