In my post on re-reading books I dislike, I mentioned that I grew up with a finite supply of books that I’d re-read, and several people responded that on the contrary they grew up with an infinite supply of books they felt they could never get through.
P-L says:
I have my own neuroses about reading as a result. Because life is finite and literature is, for all intents and purposes, infinite, choosing a book feels to me like a zero-sum game. Because I decided on a whim to read The Magus this week, the whole queue was pushed one step farther back, and as a result there is one more book (or two short ones) that I’ll never get a chance to read.
And Individ-ewe-al:
I basically don’t reread, because when I was a kid I was always overwhelmed by how many new things there were out there, rather than afraid of running out of books. Nowadays I occasionally reread my absolute favourite books.
And Atrus:
I lived pretty close to not one but three public libraries, so the concept of a limited amount of available books was—and is—completely alien to me. Like p-l, my problem at most was one of too much choice and not enough direction.
This is all very alien to me. Even though the world is full of books, I don’t want to read most of them. Even if you only count fiction, there’s a lot written in genres I don’t like, or written by authors I don’t enjoy. Also I read fast, and I read all the time. I don’t find libraries infinite—I mean I adore libraries, but I can read my way through everything I want to read in one in a couple of months. When I was twelve I read all the science fiction in Aberdare library in one summer: all of it, Anderson to Zelazny, in alphabetical order. These days it wouldn’t take as long, because I’d already have read most of it. And I’ve read everything by my favourite writers too, and they don’t write fast enough to keep me going. It never feels like a zero-sum game to me, it always feels as if there isn’t enough to read, and even if there is, as if tomorrow there might not be. I’ll admit I have a whole bookcase of unread books, and when I moved to Canada I had four boxes of them, labelled: “Misc Readpile”, “More Misc Readpile”, “The Further Adventures of Misc Readpile” and “Misc Readpile Goes West”. One or two of the books from those boxes may still be on my unread shelves.
Even when I have plenty of books, and access to libraries, that doesn’t mean that I’ll be able to put my hand on the kind of thing I want to read this minute. Re-reading always gives me that. There’s a pleasure in reading something new, certainly, but there’s also pleasure in revisiting old friends. I think I’ve said before that I consider the first re-read of a book the completion of the reading experience, I don’t really know how I feel about a book until I come back to it. I feel that something only worth reading once is pretty much a waste of time.
My ideal relationship with a book is that I will read it and love it and re-read it regularly forever. Sometimes I will know ahead of time that I’ll love it, other times it’ll be a surprise. Some books lay around for years waiting for me to get to them became favourites. More often I’ll pick up something because it looks interesting and then immediately read all of that new-to-me author’s backlist as fast as I can find it. I don’t only do this with fiction, there are biographers and historians whose complete works I have gulped down this way.
I think the real issue is psychological. The people I quoted at the beginning of the post feel as if reading is finite and they shouldn’t waste any time. I feel the complete opposite, that reading is infinite. Of course, some of this depends on reading speed—I read fast, and I read a lot. It’s a rare week I don’t get through at least a book every day, and some weeks a great deal more. If I’m stuck in bed it’s not unusual for me to read half a dozen books in a day. I know I’m not going to live forever, I know there are more books than I can ever read. But I know that in my head, the same way I know the speed of light is a limit. In my heart I know reading is forever and FTL is just around the corner.
On the re-reading panel at Anticipation, I said a couple of things that Kate Nepveu described as “making lemonade out of very sour lemons”. The first was that I have some unread books that are the last book, or the last book I got hold of, by favourite authors who are dead. They’re never going to write any more, and when I’ve read that book I’ve read everything. I’m saving these books for when I get diagnosed with a terminal illness. That way, when life does become inescapably finite, I’ll have new books by favourite authors to look forward to. The other thing is, that should I not be diagnosed with a terminal illness but instead get Alzheimers, I’ll forget writing my own books and be able to read them as if for the first time, as if someone else had written them. And that will be fun too!
So, everyone else: infinite reading or zero sum game?
Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published eight novels, most recently Half a Crown and Lifelode, and two poetry collections. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here regularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are more varied.
It depends on the author and genre.
For nonfiction, I have the sense of infinite reading. There is so much excellent, or at least intriguing, nonfiction out there. Each book takes me quite a while to read, and massive amounts of new information in new fields (or rediscovered ones) is always being published. When I think of the field of nonfiction I have that sense of having to make choices with limited time and unlimited options.
For fiction, I like to be able to re-read, and feel unsure of the overall quality of a book that I never want to re-read (even if I loved it madly on first reading and was propelled through, if I can’t feel any desire to re-read it I wonder why not and the book gets downgraded). Sometimes a whole genre or sub-genre will go temporarily stale for me and I’ll have to take a vacation from it. And I often read fiction for emotional therapy, and sometimes I just can’t find any book that will induce the feeling I want at that moment.
In case it’s relevant, I grew up with very small libraries within walking distance, some books in the house at all times, and family who occasionally drove me to larger farther away libraries or bookstores. On any given day or week I might have access to more books than I could read or only books I had read before, depending.
I have right now a backlog of about 200 books. About 50 in a physical format and another 150 or so on my Kindle. For years, as I made my weekly trip to the bookstore on Tuesday to see the new releases, if something came out from one of my couple of dozen authors I’d buy it, and it would go in the pile. So the dead tree backlog comes from that, and a subterranean press grab bag I bought a couple of years ago.
The Kindle backlog comes mostly from ‘extra’ books from Baen Webscriptions, where it was a book I wasn’t actually getting the webscription for, and a handful of books from the Baen Free library, where I want to check out the authors to see if I’d like them. So it’s kind of misleading. It’s unlikely I’ll ever clear it, or even get to a bunch of the books in it right now. But it’s a big grab bag I dive into whenever I clear the kindle list of books I that i intended to read. So my kindle backlog right now is probably about 20 books plus the rest.
I try to have one dead tree and one ebook going at all times, so maybe within 2-3 years I’ll clear the dead tree backlog, since I’m not buying them, in general, any more, other than finishing out series that I have the rest of the books in hardback.
Since I first started reading your blog, I have found your focus on re-reading (and re-re-reading, etc.)…well, odd (not that there’s anything wrong with that). My To Read list currently has about 500 books on it (and I only add likely books that I stumble upon to it, I don’t go looking–still, it grows by an average of a couple of books a week). Since I only read about 70-80 books a year, this is a problem.
And that’s just books that have already been published. With around 10,000 new books coming out a year, well, it might as well be an infinite supply. Sure, I don’t want to read most of those, but even 1% adds up.
I almost never re-read a book (or re-watch a movie), simply because I feel there is more to be derived (potentially) from something entirely new than from something I’ve already experienced once. But then, I also am somewhat addicted to novelty in other areas of life.
Complicating the reading conundrum, of course, is the fact that there are other things that I want to do besides read books. As great as books are, one cannot build a full life from them alone. And time is, unarguably, finite.
I’m so glad I’m not the only one stockpiling books by beloved authors for a time when I feel I’ll really need them. You’ve perfectly articulated why I have a room full of books, with a few shelves of unread but highly anticipated books that I am waiting for the right moment to begin.
Whenever someone asks me why I’m re-reading a book or set of novels, I think I’ll refer them to this post!
Reading your blog posts here has made me stop feeling guilty for rereading, so, thank you!
I’ve always reread books–and whenever I’m asked what my favorite book is, I try to imagine which book I could reread over and over again, forever, and still love it. However, the Infinite Book problem made me feel like I was wasting my time. No longer: I read what I want to read, be it new or already read.
On the one hand, there’s effectively an infinite supply of books. On the other hand, there’s a finite supply of books that I like, and an even more finite supply of books I love. So I’ll make time to try new books that sound interesting, but when I’m pressed for time and want to be sure I’m spending my precious reading minutes on something I’ll enjoy, I’ll turn to the books I know I love.
I have shifted within my lifetime. When I was a kid, I reread obsessively, and for some of the same reasons: getting precisely the book for my mood, for instance. I also lived in a bookful house with parents who took me to the library on a regular basis. But of course, back then I did read one or more books a day, just as you do now. I rolled out of bed and read a book while I got dressed (holding it open with my foot helped with this), read while I ate breakfast, even sometimes read while I walked to school (my mother disapproved of that.)
As I got older, my reading time waned, and somewhere along there I changed from an Infinite Reader to a Finite Reader. It could have been during grad school, when all my new friends and my teachers were recommending books and assuming I’d read books, and I’d already committed to a reading list for the semester. It could have been before that, when I’d glut on reading in the summer vacation before returning to my busy undergrad school year…I’m not sure. But Goodreads and LibraryThing inform me I have 228 books I’ve actively marked as to-read and another 21 I’ve noticed unread on my shelves. Many of these are in horizontal piles in front of my shelved books, thanks to Powell’s giftcards.
I carry a book around with me at all times in my messenger bag and I’m a fast reader, but I still don’t get through my backlog very quickly — and people keep making solid recommendations (including a certain Jo Walton with her tor.com posts.) And of course, I’m still filling in gaps in my sci-fi reading, because my dad didn’t own every classic sci-fi book in the world, whatever I believed as a child. There are many books I want to reread, but apart from Aubrey-Maturin books, I seldom do. It’s easy to be a Finite Reader when you see that to-read number and know how slowly you’re getting through it.
Half a dozen books in a day? I’m in the “there are more good books than time to read them” camp personally, and am pretty sure I’d still think so even if I read five times as quickly.
Which raises a point I’ve often thought about over the years. I’ve always assumed I’m a bit of an anomaly on reading speed: when I was twelve I’d read blazingly fast, but somewhere in my early or mid-twenties I slowed down. I probably read today at about half the pace I used to. I still can read faster, with full comprehension (I test myself now and then, and I usually still read nonfiction more quickly), but it feels wrong, like watching a movie in fast forward. The better the book, the more slowly I savor it.
And then there’s the reflection period. After (and during!) a really good book, I put it down and think about it. With the absolute best books, I might spend nearly as much time in reverie as actually reading.
Anyone else have similar experiences with reading speed (and thus bandwidth)?
Infinite reading. I actually prefer to reread rather than read for the first time. I read for the experience of having read. Then I can go back and enjoy the book properly.
I also have to force myself to read linearly. I skip around at random for interesting spots. I jump to the end and read that immediately after having read the opening. Once I know the ending, I can relax and enjoy the book.
Zero-sum game.
I read very slowly. I once took a book on speed-reading from the library, but I couldn’t get through it before I had to return it. (That sounds like a joke, but…)
If I’m lucky, I can read four dozen books in a year. Usually, I’m not lucky.
I have become a Finite Reader, but it doesn’t stop me rereading favourite books. I always get something new out of Tolkien and Dick, for example, and of course it is always worth rereading (and rewatching) Shakespeare. Also, my wife likes me to read to her at night, which is a good way to closely reread a favourite book.
However, I have become more choosy about which new books I take the time to read, and more relaxed about giving up on a book that isn’t working for me. I decided a while ago to make classic works a substantial part of my reading diet, and that has led me to discover some truly wonderful writing. I don’t think there’s any harm in rereading a great book, indeed it well worth doing, but I want to spend as little of my finite reading time on substandard stuff as possible.
I’m a re-reader, always have been, since I was 2 and had How the Grinch Stole Christmas memorized and would “read” it to myself over and over again. I’ve even been known to re-read a book as soon as I finished it the first time around, if it was good enough.
I’m also a graduate student in English, and re-reading is in many ways my job. I do read new things all the time, but I find that it is often impossible to get all the things out of a book that I want to with just one read. Not only do I need to re-read things when I teach, but I’m used to reading on a different level than the average person. I’m getting a lot of my pleasure from reading out of figuring out how books mean things on so many different levels, and that takes re-reading. I find new things every time I read a book again, whether its Paradise Lost or Ender’s Game.
But if I was only able to read four dozen books a year, I think I’d probably not re-read much either. I’ve read a dozen books (fantasy and sci-fi, mostly, to make up for a lack of fun reading over the last three months as I studied for my PhD exams) in the last two weeks alone. I read probably 300 books a year, and maybe 30 of those are rereads, either for teaching or for pleasure.
Previously I’d not considered a childhood and adolescence in which the number of books was limited to have influenced how much I’ve re-read my favorite books. Also, like you, particularly with certain books such as those by George Eliot, Tolstoy, Jane Austen and many other authors, even a second or third or 20th reading didn’t complete the reading experience of those works. The more experience I, the reader, accumulated in life and literature and writing and history and everything else, the more the texts of these works reveals.
However, with more recently published fiction I don’t re-read hardly ever now. My re-reading days seem mostly finished for fiction. It’s rare I pick up a novel again after I’ve finished it (though there are the rare titles that I do read a second time).
But I haven’t run out of things to read at all now — or to re-read, for that matter. So much. Writing history makes this so. So maybe its just history and fiction have switched places in my mind, as to which is primary? For a long time I couldn’t decide whether literature or history was the direction I was going. I chose literature, fiction, writiing. And how I’m back with history.
Isn’t life strange? It never ceases to surprise one. Which sometimes not so good, as with tbaggers et al., but in other ways it’s wonderful.
Love, C.
I’m very much a re-reader too. And for about the same reason. My parents encouraged reading, and we went to the library every week or more often. But my parent didn’t generally buy us a lot of books, or toys, or other pastimes. And the library limited the number of books that children could sign out.
So I reread the books we had at home a lot. And I also tended to make at least some of my library books each week be favorites to reread. I knew I’d be rereading before the next trip to the library, so I’d be sure to get something I knew I’d enjoy rereading, because winding up with a stack of new books that I’d read but wasn’t interested in re-reading would be sad.
I also read fast enough that I tend to miss things on a first reading of a book. So if I like the book the first time, I’ll immediately re-read it. It doesn’t feel properly read until the second read-through.
I developed the same habit in college and only in the last few years (actually, since 2008 when I started the Sandman series and fell head-over-heels for fantasy) that I branched out. Even now, though, I still have my stalwarts that are in continuous circulation. I may be pillaging my library’s spec fic collection (which works out pretty well since I work there and can keep overriding the renewal limits), but I’m still always in the process of re-reading something by Jane Austen, Douglas Adams, Bill Bryson, and Evelyn Waugh (currently it’s Northanger Abbey, Last Chance To See, A Short History Of Nearly Everything, and The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold respectively). There hasn’t been a point in time since, probably, 2000 that I haven’t been in the middle of one book by at least one of those authors.
Hmm. I grew up around a LOT of books, but hardly an infinite supply — I still remember the blessed day the librarian let me start browsing the adult shelves after I had convinced her that I had read literally everything in the children’s section.
And we traveled a lot, and were restricted to the few books we could cram into our suitcases (oh, how my brother and sister and I negotiated over who would bring what!)
So I re-read a lot. Indeed, certain books became annual re-reads, as dear and familiar as the rituals of the seasons and the holidays.
Nowadays, as the number of books I have access to expands (I add at least a new book a day to my “read this!” list, even if I don’t physically obtain it) and the available time for reading shrinks, I don’t re-read much at all.
But it HURTS sometimes. I find myself longing for, physically craving an old favorite that I have memorized word-for-word, but it seems almost morally questionable when the TBR stack is tottering and the library overdue notices begin to pile up…
A month or so ago I stumbled across an old Harlequin romance that I had loved and obsessively re-read as a young teen. I gave in and bought it, and felt deliciously naughty giving a couple of hours time to such a trivial book that I could still practically recite from memory when there were so many worthy and wonderful new titles waiting for me. (And it was just as tremendous fun as I recalled, btw, although I couldn’t really divorce the actual words-on-the-page from the re-triggered breathless romanticism of my thirteen-year-old self)
Oh, dear, what a tract you have inspired! But like all your posts, so much food for thought.
I’m very much in your category, Jo. In fact, I was nodding all the way through your post. The only exception was the idea of holding out on the last unread book by a deceased author – I don’t have enough discipline to leave it that long. After all, I might die suddenly, and then I’d have denied myself that great pleasure for nothing! :)
I know how you feel. Growing up my library was pretty limited so the books I did have I re-read over and over. I still do that to this day, it is like going back to an old friend. It also brings back memories for me of when I first read the book or other times. And I admit on the re-reads I often see it from a new perspective.
, it is like going back to an old friend.
That’s it, exactly.
A good book, or even better, a series, is a relationship, with the text, the author, and the characters. With a good relationship, you can stay with it for years, even if it is simply more of what was good in the first place.
But you can also be disappointed in a way that doesn’t happen when you only read things once. For example, I suspect that the Ekatrin shaped hole in Bujold’s Diplomatic Immunity isn’t nearly as painful for someone who hasn’t read the earlier books often enough to make friends with Ekatrin.
I’m–both?
I do re-read a select few books that bring about deep surges of emotion in me when I pick them up. There are a few authors that I know for a fact I got more out of the second or fourth time I read their books. You just see more, especially if it’s a series read one book at a time as they came out, then they can be re-read all as one. Some books are comfort-reads and some I read when I really want to return to that place with those characters. I tend to re-read books that made me cry or made me angry (not at the book but along with the characters) or made me fall in love again. I want to be drawn along for the ride. Very few authors can do that to me, and so I re-read the ones who can.
But most of my reading is new to me. If I weren’t working several jobs I’d be able to do more than a book every day or two, but as it stands, I’m limited financially and time-wise. But I still manage about 150 a year. The to-read pile is bigger than that at any given moment. The to-buy list is huge. I never feel like I’m going to run out of books, persay, but I also feel like I want an old friend to return to.
Potentially I re-read because I had that same sort of childhood: there were only so many books, and I re-read them and re-read them and re-read them. The school I want to had a tiny library that I worked my way through quickly and I had no other access.
I don’t know. I can’t imagine being able to read some books only once–it would be a tragedy. They yield up so much more the second time around. But I search for new things with an unceasing hunger. So I’m both re-reader and new reader.
A re-read is like an old friend – a guaranteed enjoyable read. I know what I’m getting, so if I want something I’m going to love and will cheer me up, for example, a re-read is where I go. A new book may or may not be enjoyable – it’s taking a chance. It might be heavy going, or it might not. I have to be in the mood for something new!
I used to reread a lot when I was a kid– I had much less access to books, and the net wasn’t competing for my reading time.
Then I starting buying books, but till the 80s I could keep up with the sf I was interested in.
I remember the books I reread (sometimes five times or more) as a kid better than what I read a month ago. Some of it is probably not having as good a memory, but I think the rereading is the huge factor.
I’m completely swamped by my too-read pile.
I try to remember that (using the optimistic number of 4 books/week and the plausible number of living another 30 years), I will only read about 6000 more books in my life (including rereads), and only read books I’m enthusiastic about.
In re number of books read/week and those of us with some decades under our belts: the books used to be a lot shorter. Sf novels (admittedly with smallish print) used to be around 200 pages long. These days, they’re commonly republished two or three in a volume.
I do a bit of both, actually. I like to re-read (just finished re-reading LotR, actually), but I tend to stick to the books and authors I really liked; when I was about 15-17 that however posed a problem, because I had finished the library books that fit my limited interests, and after reading the same books over and over for a dozen times well, I thought it was time for a change, you know?
So I broadened my horizons, and discovered that many books I thought I wouldn’t like were actually very good, and some others I would never have discovered if not by picking them up randomly from a shelf (well, semi-randomly). And as my ‘to read’ list kept growing, re-reading became more and more like a forbidden pleasure rather than the norm.
So yes, re-reading is like coming back to an old friend, but sometimes you just like to make some new ones. :)
Wetlandwernw: I deciuded dying suddenly isn’t worth worrying about. I’m always going to be in the middle of a book.
Zero-sum people who feel guilty when re-reading — it sounds to me like “I’m only going to take x breaths in my life, they all ought to smell different.” And wouldn’t that be an interesting project!
I don’t worry about infinite reading, for the same reason I don’t worry about not seeing every square mile of Earth before I die – it’s not feasible, but that isn’t a bad thing. I live somewhere pleasant and comfortable, but enjoy visiting new places and seeing new horizons. Rereading books is like returning home, changed by where I’ve been. To overextend the metaphor a bit, books reviews are like postcards: they tell me something about a place I have never been, and may never visit, but are a joy to read anyway. bluejo’s postcards are amongst the best.
I definitely come down on the side where there’s simply not enough time to read all the books I want to read.
In my own experience growing up as a boy with limited reading material, part of the problem was really mine. I had very selective tastes and as a result there were a lot of books that I may well have loved if I’d been willing to give them a shot.
As I got older and got tired of the limited selection I started to branch out a little more and discovered brand new wonders. My options seem to get wider every year, which always leaves me with a larger pool of books left to read.
It doesn’t help that I read slowly. The funny thing about reading slowly is that it’s a direct result of the lack of reading material available in my youth. I found that if I read too quickly, I was left without anything to read that much quicker. So I slowed down a lot and now that I have tons of reading material available to me, I am unable to pick up the pace that much. It’s also true, however, that even though I’m happy to read a much broader selection of books these days, there are still few and far between that I well and truly love. When I discover one of those particularly well loved books, I tend to slow my reading down even more to truly savor it.
One thing I could never do is just set a book by a favorite author aside for a rainy day. In my worldview, any given day might be my last and I’d hate to be bereft of an opportunity to read a book by a favorite author because I got hit by a cab on Fifth Ave.
I have 6 bookcases crammed full of books, most of which I reread if I don’t have any new material to read. I tend to read very fast, on avg 100 pages an hr or better. I don’t keep a count on how many I read in a year because then I might budget how much I spend at Amazon, bookstores etc…I do use the library but mostly for new authors I have not read and don’t know if I will like. My wife says I can smell a used bookstore and I have thought it might be a good job for me when I retire to have one. I was the guy in school who walked from one class to another reading a book and who read during class because teachers bored me.
A bit of both. As a kid, I also read through everything that interested me in the local library. We had to change libraries for a bit until I started reading older teen/adult stuff (this was before the big boom in teen lit).
And I’ve done a lot of rereading.
BUT when I see what’s out there, I feel a sense of despair of the things that I should be reading. Trying to tame that and just read what I want when I want & enjoy it, rather than beat up on myself for not reading more.
I grew up a voracious reader, depleting the grade school library by grade 6, and moved onto the classics through high school. I realized 20 years later that I had not been old and wise enough to have gotten all there was to get out of those books and started rereading. Now I reread all the time and I totally agree with you:
There’s a pleasure in reading something new, certainly, but there’s also pleasure in revisiting old friends. I think I’ve said before that I consider the first re-read of a book the completion of the reading experience.
The first time through a book is a getting to know you period. On a second or third reread, I discover the genius of the authors foreshadowing and savor the sentence construction, the turn of phrase. It’s comfortable and intimate….like being in on the joke, and I feel safe with a trusted old friend.
I also love having those old friends around on the shelves.
“Even though the world is full of books, I don’t want to read most of them.”
I agree. I’ve read a lot of books, including famous novels, of which the main benefit is that I may now say with firm confidence, “That is not my kind of book.”
Even the kinds that I like, I couldn’t read them all so I’m not going to try. My approach is to skim around and try things, getting a broad sense of the field, and then diving deep in specific places that look worthwhile. Kind of how archaeologists approach excavation surveys.
Re-reading gives me the advantage of gaining deep and secure knowledge of the works in question, though that’s not why I do it. I do it because I like re-reading those books.
I’m firmly in the ‘depends on my mood’ camp, the reasons for which have already been laid out well by other posters. The only thing I want to add is a distinction I make which may be useful for authors considering making electronic versions of their work available for free:
I will never have enough money to buy everything I want to read, so I never pay money for something I don’t know I will like. That’s what libraries are for. I frequently buy things so that I can reread (rewatch, relisten to) them. The easier you make it for me to find the first time, the more likely you are to get my money.
I think it has to do with not just reading speed, but reading style.
I’m a fast reader. It’s a rare day that I don’t make it through at least one book. During vacations, I usually manage 2-3. I regularly re-read favorites. My reading speed goes hand-in-hand with my reading style. The first time I read a book, I’m usually consumed by wanting to know what happens, so I race through the books absorbing the big picture. I would compare it to the first time I see a painting or other work of art. At first glance, I see the big picture. Then, if I like what I see, I look again and again searching out increasingly greater detail. Quite honestly, if I don’t like the big picture, I usually have little interest in the details.
This summer I raced through Goodkind’s Sword of Truth in just over a week. I desperately wanted to know how things wrapped up for Richard, et al.
Now, eight months later, I’m making my way back through the series at a more leisurely pace. There’s a new joy for me in these books because not only am I rediscovering my love of the characters, there’s a whole host of details and connections that I missed the first time through.
(The same can be said of WoT which I re-read with each addition to the series. Each time I go through the books, I catch new details and connections.)
Very much both.
I read as fast as you do, Jo, and I reread all the time; I also don’t consider my experience of a book complete until rereading, and usually rereading at a substantially different age.
I also know that I’m not going to run out of new things. My pile of stuff I really ought to read, or in some cases ought to have read, is taller than I am, and in list format is many pages long.
What I do run out of is mental energy. When I’m tired, when I’m ill, when I’m working hard on something intellectual, I just can’t face new books because I haven’t got the attention to actually digest them. So I go to my comfort reading– and that runs out. The year my grandfather died I reread the entirety of Jane Austen, Georgette Heyer, C.S. Lewis, Tamora Pierce, Terry Pratchett, Daniel Pinkwater, Bruce Coville, Peter S. Beagle, Diana Wynne Jones, and several others, and then I sat there going, oh hell, I am out of things I have the energy to reread. And rereading is less draining than reading for the first time.
So nowadays I hoard comfort books. I try not to reread them very frequently. And I quietly rejoice whenever I find something I know I’ll be able to reread in a dark hour, because they’re fairly thin on the ground.
But, you know, when I have energy? Infinity all the way.
bluejo @24 – That’s a good point – I’ll always be in the middle of a book. Okay, so what it really comes down to is that I just haven’t got the self-discipline to deny myself a guaranteed good read for more than a very finite period – like, until the next long weekend. ;)
Calimac @30 – I’ve read a lot of books… of which the main benefit is that I may now say with firm confidence, “That is not my kind of book.” LOL! Yeah, I’ve got a few of those on my list… They actually come in handy when someone says, “Oh, you’ll like this one, it’s a lot like ___.” I can say, “Oh, great, thanks for the recommendation!” and know I won’t waste my time on it.
Rush-That-Speaks @33 – I love the idea of “comfort books;” it totally makes sense to me. From your list of comfort reading, I think I need to examine a few new (to me) authors. About half your list are among my all-time favorites, so I’ll have to check out the others now. That’s one of the things I love about the various conversations here – I’ve found some good new reading, and identified a few that I know I won’t bother with, all without having to do the footwork!
This seems to be the classic (not universal) pattern for my generation (which is roughly your generation) of SF fan. We read all the books with a rocketship on the spine in our library (or was it an atom in yours?) (well, usually at least two libraries, school and public), and go back to reread favorites because they only get NEW SF in very rarely.
Then we change schools, or possibly even public libraries (I was in a small town with only one public library), and have NEW SF to read! And that’s great. And then we go back to some old favorite — and it’s not there in the new library. Shock, horror!
So, not only did the scarcity train us to reread, the lack of access to favorites trains us to own and not be happy with just borrowing.
Similarly, I read ALL SF I came across, even J.G. Ballard, who I never liked. It was SF, there wasn’t enough SF, I had to read it.
These days, there’s no possibility of reading all the SF (never mind fantasy), and it seems to me that far less of it is worth reading. I don’t know if SF has changed, or if it’s mostly me, but I find very little I really care to read these days. Since I still like rereading what I’ve always liked rereading, and a fair amount of more recent stuff, I incline towards the theory that the change is mainly external.
I have dine some rereading in limited circumstances.
1. From the time I graduated from high school to the time I finished medical school and residency (a period of 13 years) I did very little reading for pleasure. I was too busy with school work. After I got into my medical prqactice I had time to read again. I started by rereading all of my favorite SF and Fantasy books that I’d read as a child.
2. If I’m reading a book from a series and it’s been a few years since the previous book in the series came out I will reread the series from the beginning so I can remember all of the little details.
3. When I finished Stephen King’s Dark Tower series I loved it so much that I read it again.
Otherwise I prefer top read new books. Like many others by to be read pile keeps growing and growing.
P.S. I just read Molly Zero after reading your review and loved it. Now I’m going to have to find some more Keith Roberts to read and add them to the pile.
Well, I’ll repeat here what I said before: being able to find something to read has always had far more to do with my own state of mind than the availability of books. It’s just like the way one goes round and round a perfectly well-stocked grocery store unable to think of anything to get for dinner.
Yes, I agree. There’s not enough good stuff of interest if you read fast.
As you say, there could be an hundred million garden variety family drama novels set in Boringsville USA or Dullton England, or Sydney, and it matters not. Never going to want to read more than a handful, if that.
Luckily, I like comics too, so that helps.
Still though, probably only likely to reread books that are very high on the list, especially novels. Culling them for space reasons by this category – going to read this again? No, so goodbye.
I’m a non-rereader, by and large. The Lord of the Rings has the honorary position of my Favorite Book Series Of All Time, yet I can’t get through it and haven’t been able to since high school, because without the suspense I get bored.
I’m always surprised to hear about people getting more out of a book the second time through. I believe I could get more out of Jane Austen the second time through, but I haven’t noticed this happening very much with the average SF/fantasy book. However, since I’ve generally forgotten much of the book if I’m ready to reread it, how would I really know if I’m getting different things out of it the second time? I’m already getting surprised by misremembered subplot turns left and right.
I do reread the Song of Ice and Fire books when a new one (eventually) comes out, but that is out of sheer necessity… I cannot remember what on earth all those characters were up to, besides a snapshot of their last known whereabouts.
After I read Quincunx I knew that I could uncover more about the structure of the book if I could reread it, but I also knew that I would never get through it a second time. Books I’m rereading often wander off and get lost, because I’m not driven to find out what happens next and hence forget to pick them back up. (There are an indeterminate number of half-finished books around to tempt me at all times, and at some point the longer-neglected of them fade into the mists of time. This is not to say that I don’t swallow good new books whole in a single 4-hour gulp!)
Non-fiction books are much easier for me to reread, because I want to replenish all the facts I’ve forgotten, and I can reread random parts of them.
Definitely a re-reader here, I always have been. The first time I read a book, I’ll just blast through it, almost like speed reading. Then I’ll go through it again, but slower, to find all the little details that ornament and refine the prose. That’s for fiction. Non-fiction is a bit different. I tend to read it more slowly, to take the information properly. Speed reading a programmer’s reference manual is a sure method of getting everything worng, at least for me. :-)
As for backlog, I’ve got several three-foot-tall stacks of paperbacks that I’ve yet to read. On top of that, I have boxes of books that I’ve not put on shelves because I don’t have enough room. I’ve got books that I bought when I was 12 — back when paperbacks were 50 cents, brand new. Some of my friends don’t understand why I keep them — they read a book _maybe_ re-read it once, then give it away, or sell it cheap. Generally, though, they use the library. “Why buy it if I can check it out for free?” is the attitude. There’s something to be said for that, but I like my books, confound it! :-)
I don’t find reading to be a zero-sum game — I do reread, and get great pleasure out of the ways in which my relationships to books change as I change. The Mirror Dance I finished rereading last week is a very different reading experience from the one I read in 1997.
But I am very aware that there are many more books out there that I would enjoy reading than I will ever possibly have time for, even if I lived several centuries and no new books were produced during that time. (Not something I wish for, I want new books too!) When Jo says “I adore libraries, but I can read my way through everything I want to read in one in a couple of months,” I try to imagine that and I just… can’t. I can often tell I won’t enjoy a novel from the dustjacket, or from reading the first few pages, but it often takes me 1/3 of the way into a book to either fully engage or decide that it’s not going to work. I used to rule out entire genres (no mimetic fiction, no mystery, no romance, no milSF, no gothics) — but I’ve found books in all of those genres that I really adore and am glad I read, so I’ve abandoned that strategy as well.
For instance: I spent the last few weeks reading Peter Dickinson novels. The first three were varying levels of mediocre — not a waste of my time, but they didn’t do a lot for me. The fourth, though, was absolutely fantastic, and I suspect I’ll reread it in a few years, and I’m really glad I just kept on reading his work and trying to figure out what he was doing & how I might approach it until I found both a novel & an approach that clicked.
And that’s just *novels*! There are plays and poems! There is truly infinite non-fiction that I want to read; literary criticism, history, biography, memoirs, books about science and math and music, cookbooks… even if my local library were frozen in amber so that nothing new was added to it, I couldn’t read everything in it that (might) interest me in the next 50 or 60 years!
I don’t in any way mean this as a criticism of Jo’s ability to know what she likes, but I’m really curious to know how that works. Jo, it’s obvious from your posts here that you read in a lot of different genres — how do you know what won’t interest you? Or is it that the idea of missing out on the 4th fantastic Peter Dickinson novel because the first one is only okay isn’t one that bothers you?
Hoping that this makes sense despite infant-induced sleep deprivation…
CJShields: I think there are only two Peter Dickinson novels I don’t like…
But seriously, I don’t know, can’t know, everything I’ll ever want to read. There are books I pass by today that I may be desperate for next week. I can read everything I want to read out of a library and go back to it and read other things — if I’ve found a new writer, or I can wander round the library shelves picking things out that I’m desperate enough to try and that might turn out to be wonderful.
But as I said about Philip Dick the other day, I don’t have to eat the whole jar to find out if it’s marmalade all the way through. If I read a few books by a writer and I don’t like them, I’ll give up. My give up point is at different places for different writers. Sometimes other people can persuade me to try again.
Non-fiction is a different thing — that is infinite, and whether I want to read it has different parameters.
And still, as I have proved empirically and often, if you give me a new library I will mine it out in an enthusiastic couple of months, and after that use it for ILL and when desperate.