The Pleasures of Rereading

I reread. If it’s a good book, I read it twice. If it’s a very good book, I may read it twice, put it aside, and then read it again later. If it’s a WONDERFUL book, I will reread it until eventually I can quote long passages.

I do not know how many times I have read Huckleberry Finn – two hundred times? Five hundred? P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves stories: one hundred times. The Patchwork Planet, by Ann Tyler: ten times. Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon stories: fifteen times (I’ve had it longer than the Ann Tyler book. Watership Down, by Richard Adams, fifty times.

But, you say, look at all the books you have never read! Why are you rereading? There are several reasons. If I haven’t been to the library or the used bookstores lately, I run out of new books. I don’t stop reading; I’m always reading, so I reread some of my favorites. Sometimes I read them to see how they are constructed. Why is that funny? What did I like so much? Can I imitate it in my writing? And sometimes I reread like a child pulls out a worn teddy bear; it comforts me.

I don’t hang on to books as a rule; I pass them on to someone else. If I kept all my books, I simply wouldn’t have room for them. I’d have to get another house just to store books. If I keep a book, it is special. One of my favorite books is a school textbook that belonged to my father: The Silent Reading Hour. When I was a child I read and reread these charming stories, and then I read and reread them to my child. One of the great pleasures of reading is reading them aloud to the next generation. Some books are meant to be read aloud. Robinson Crusoe is a bear to read to yourself – all those compound and complex and compound-complex sentences, all those clauses and phrases, but read aloud, the language is natural, flowing, eloquent.

I envy you if you are reading any of these books for the first time. Reading a book for the first time is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. But the good books and the great books are old friends.