What Does the Bookworm Say?: Re-reading Books

Hi and welcome to What Does the Bookworm Say?, a feature where I discuss bookish topics with my friends at The Reader’s Antidote, Books Unbound and The Windy Pages. Each week, we will discuss a new bookish topic. This week’s topic is re-reading books – do you re-read your favorites? If so, why and what are they? Do they change every time you read them?

Do I re-read books? Yes, I do, but not very often. Since I started blogging a few years ago, I haven’t had a lot of time to re-read books. There’s a lot of pressure in book blogging to read the newest thing or at least read new to you things and re-reading books cuts into that reading time. And while I don’t generally read with any specific plan, I find that I am less likely to re-read books because I feel like that time should be spent reading something I haven’t read before. I also have a huge stack of unread books so I feel a bit guilty when I re-read books. That said, I will often re-read my favorite parts of a book but not the whole book. This is especially true of romances where, let’s be honest, I go back and read the smutty parts when I need something fun and quick to pass the time. I find myself re-reading favorite passages when I am too tired to engage with a new story and still want to read. One of my reading goals this year was to re-read more of my favorite books. I haven’t really done this but this post is reminding me of that goal so I may actually do it.

I don’t usually get anything new when I re-read a book, though sometimes I catch little things that I didn’t notice before. The thing that attracts me to re-reading a book is that it’s something I know and already like. It’s like visiting with an old friend and, even though I know what’s going to happen, I want to see it unfold again.

Some of the books I’d like to re-read are:
Harry Potter series
Anne of Green Gables
Jurassic Park
The Grapes of Wrath (I remember really liking this in HS and want to re-read it to see if I still feel the same)
Vampire Academy series
Y: The Last Man

Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Let me know – are you the type of person who likes to re-read books or is once enough for you?  Don’t forget to check out what The Reader’s Antidote, Books Unbound and The Windy Pages have to say about this topic as well. If you have a topic you’d like us to cover, just leave it in the comments below.