Brona's Salon, on rereading

Brona's Salon is a new meme which aims to gather a group of like-minded bookish people 'under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine the taste and increase the knowledge of the participants through conversation.'

Brona's Books

Each week she will provide a prompt intended to inspire a conversation.

However please feel free to discuss your current read or join in the conversation in any way that you see fit. Amusement, refinement and knowledge will surely follow!

This week's prompt: Lately I have been thinking about rereading a lot.

I, too, think a lot about rereading but rarely do it. I want to revisit old friends or retrieve the good feeling I got the last time I read the book. Sometimes I want to reread because I want to refresh my memory of the action, plot of characters, as my daughter would be sure to tell you if she was here. But usually I do not succumb to the pull of the desire for a reread because I have so many other unread books calling my name.

On the rare occasion when I do reread a book I am never quite sure what the experience will hold for me. Several times I've actually ended up not liking the book as much after the reread as my memory told me I would like it. Case in point, I just reread Little Women for the Classics Club Spin late last year. I embarked on the rereading journey expecting to be entranced again by the March sisters and their world. What I found was a preachy, almost stilted book. I was shocked. Now to be fair, I first read Little Women when I was a pup myself, probably under the age of twelve and I may have read the abridged version first time around. But I think that in my childish stage I completely glossed over or didn't recognize the overt preachiness of this classic. This has happened a few other times with books I loved as kid and didn't admire as much when I reread it as an adult. 

(Word of caution here: if you are a parent and want to read a book aloud to your children, one which was one of your childhood favorites, read a few chapters to yourself first. You might be shocked at what you find. My mother-in-law, God rest her soul, gave me one of her favorite childhood books to read to my children. I didn't preview it, just started reading it aloud and had to stop. It was too racist. Society norms had changed a lot since Mom was a young girl. I was pretty upset with myself for not previewing it first.)

I have actually made a conscious decision to NOT reread some of my favorite books because I don't want to risk having my memory tainted if, by chance, I don't like it as much the second time through. Three books which come to mind as examples of this are:  The Secret Life of Bees; Cold Sassy Tree; and The Power of One. 

Rereading a book can also help me realize how much I have changed and moved on since I first read the book. For many years I reread a favorite book A Town Like Alice by Neville Shute. I saw the mini-series based on the book back in the 1980s and loved it. I first read the book at that time and would reread it with some regularity afterwards. For some reason it really spoke to me. The last time through, though, I realized that the book no longer spoke to me. I actually touched it and said goodbye. It was obvious to me that I was done with it, whatever need it had fulfilled was done. Now it will become part of my memory bank of books, one I will only revisit in my mind.

When I do reread a book, the format may help make my decision. For example, I love to listen to the audiobook of To Kill a Mockingbird read by Roses Prichard. I have it on my iTunes account and relisten to all or part of it every once in a while. This narrator has become for me the voice of Scout. Stargirl read by the late, great John Ritter, is a treasure to be enjoyed many times.  I first read The Fault in Ours Stars in the print edition then reread (or re-consumed) it in the audio format. Likewise, I may read the print edition of books I first listened to as audiobooks. Mirrormask by Neil Gaiman is an example of that. As I listened to the story I realized I was missing out on the illustrations which would bring it to life in the print edition.

Oddly, because I never saw myself this way in the past, the books I reread the most often are poetry books. Well, that statement isn't exactly accurate. I am more likely to reread poems than anything else, I rarely reread the whole book. My favorite poets are Mary Oliver, Billy Collins, Maya Angelou, and Galway Kinnell. My favorite poetry books are those edited by Roger Housden in the "Ten Poems" series. What I love best about the poems in these books is how Housden adds his thoughts and a commentary which opens up the poems for me. I reread these books often. Poetry, on a reread, always come across as new because various aspects are revealed on closer examination.

Lastly, I should mention Jane Austen. I read her books all the time. Need I say more?

So there you have it. I don't often reread books but if I do I either do it with trepidation or I attempt to consume it in a different format (usually audio.)  What about you? Do you often reread books? If so, what are your favorite rereads and why do you reread books? If not, why not? Let's have a discussion. Your turn to talk in the comments below....

Anne

PS- If you are a blogger and want to participate, join up at Brona's Books.