Tuesday 14 July 2015

A wild reader appears back, and talks about rereading books.

Rereading books is one of those things that people either do or don’t do at all. You either find people who are in love with the world and want to dive back in, find out new things that you don’t remember or you never noticed, and you have people who think rereading is boring and the world will always be the same and why should they reread a book when there’s nothing new about it.

I fall into a category of I reread books when I love them so much I feel as though I need to dive into it again. Lately I’ve not been reading a lot, and that kills me. I’m a huge fan of books, I love reading. And yet as of late I just haven’t wanted to pick up a book and read it cover to cover. So, I took the advice of multiple people, of rereading a favourite book.

Can you guess what I chose?

What I found interesting about this process was that it really really worked. I mean, I had read six books up to the point when I started rereading. And then I picked up Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone last week, and now I’m onto Prisoner of Azkaban. And I’m remembering why I love the world so much, I remember why these books got me into reading desperately in the first place. I have memories of reading them, I have memories of my first spoiler (amazingly at that point I wasn’t aware spoilers were bad, and still cried when the spoiler came true). But what I found the most interesting was, even though I could probably recite passages from these books, and I knew which bits were coming next, I was still so invested in the next part, and then the next, and I didn’t care how much I’ve read these books, I just love reading them.

And I get that nostalgia has a huge part to play in this. We reread these books because when we were younger we made a connection with the characters. Sometimes when we reread a book, we realise how juvenile they are, how much we used to love them but the writing style is so bad. Sometimes we reread them and just feel like we’re home. And I love rereading books that make me feel happy and comfortable.


So, here’s my blog, it’s about the fuzzy feelings we get when we read books, it’s reviews, it’s talking about childhood books. I read primarily Young Adult fiction because I want to be Peter Pan and never grow up, and staying in the happy phase of more exciting teenaged years than mine. So get ready world, because I have no idea how this thing is going to go.