Re-reading…

I have re-read books ever since I can remember. Yes, re-read. People would ask me as a kid, “How do you still find a book interesting once you have read it?” I wouldn’t know how to respond then, except know within that I loved re-reading my favourite books. There are a couple of books from my childhood that I’ve read almost 25 times (not at all an exaggeration). I never thought much about it until recently, when I got the all-too-familiar craving to re-read an old book. I realised I hadn’t re-read in a long time and this time around, my gigantic TBR pile was throwing me the ugliest of looks.

Re-reading is usually done to better understand a piece of complex text, much like watching Christopher Nolan movies twice or thrice to understand it better (or at all, who am I kidding). But to me, re-reading is more of a process of self-discovery. When I re-read something that I read 10 or 15 years ago, there is a whole different way in which I enjoy and relate to the same piece of writing. That teaches me a lot about myself, how much I have grown and where my biases lie after the experiences I’ve had and the lessons I learnt. Also, re-reading is therapeutic for me, not unlike meeting an old friend after a long while.

There is definitely the counter-argument that re-reading can sometimes rob the magic that the book held when one first read it. It has happened to me with movies more than books. Quite a lot of movies that I enjoyed as a kid seem highly distasteful now. Fortunately or unfortunately, I’m yet to experience that disappointment with books. Maybe I will be disappointed one day while re-reading an old favourite and I’m willing to take that risk.

Re-reading is a hugely personal and a deeply individualistic choice, much like the choice of books that we read and enjoy. The ever-increasing TBR pile is sometimes intimidating to the point of anxiety. But I know I can’t read every book there is before I die. I constantly try to make my peace with that so that it doesn’t interfere too much with my occasional guilty pleasure of re-reading. Books remain the same, but I inevitably don’t. And that, I believe, makes all the difference for me.