On Rereading

If you know me personally, or if you have been reading my blog for a long time, you might know two things about me:

1. I love to read, and I often read books more than once.
2. I prefer character driven stories over plot driven ones.

This post is going to be a argument about why you should read books more than once. In my opinion, any book worth reading is worth rereading. If it's not interesting or subtle or involved enough to make it worth rereading, it's probably not worth the first time through either. Of course, this post is just talking about fiction. Nonfiction is a whole different topic, and this really doesn't apply to it.

I started really thinking about this a few weeks ago, when I decided to reread all of S.E. Hinton's books after seeing a play version of The Outsiders, which is one of my very favorite books. Then, yesterday, I read The Fault in Our Stars for the second time, after seeing the movie a few weeks ago. All of this helped to really bring into focus my thoughts on this topic. I've also been rewatching old Vlogbrothers videos this week too (I've started at the very beginning. I doubt I'll get all the way through them, but it's fun to try), which has made me realize that my thoughts on this apply to other mediums as well.

Now, I believe that everybody reads for a different reason, and that's okay. Books are for their readers, and every reader needs something different from a book. Some people read to experience new things, some people read to escape their everyday life, some people read to gain a new perspective. I read to connect to characters and people I'll never meet. This brings us to point 2, from above. I prefer books with well fleshed out characters, and stories that are driven by choices the character makes rather than plot twists that come from an outside source.

All of this leads us to the reason that I think books are worth rereading. Any good book will never be exactly the same any two times you read it. I'm going to use The Outsiders as my example, since it's a book I've read four or five times over the last five or six years.

The movie was pretty great too.

The first time I read it, I was really just trying to absorb the story. I was trying to understand the Curtis family dynamics, and who the heck the Socs were, and why it all even mattered. The second time I read it, I was able to pick up on far more nuance that the first time. Now that I had a good grasp on the plot, I was able to really connect with Ponyboy, and try to image what I would have done in those situations. The most recent time I read it, just a few weeks ago, was pretty different. The first few times I read it, I was about 11 or 12. This time, I was 16, and suddenly, the book felt different. While before, I'd always connected most to Ponyboy, this time, I found myself really connecting to Darrel, and thinking about how I would deal with those kinds of situations from his perspective.

I had a similar experience with The Fault in Our Stars. The first time I read it, about two years ago, I really just took in the story. I didn't know what to expect, and I just took it in, and tried to understand it at it's base value. This time, I really found myself connection with Hazel. Now, I don't have a terminal illness, and I've never had to deal with almost any of the things she's had to deal with, but for some reason, I really found myself experiencing the story through her eyes, instead of from the outside.

The google image search for TFiOS is a timewaster. A beautiful, kind of amazing timewaster. Somehow, though, I still just ended up with this screenshot from the movie.

I really think that it is impossible to read a book twice and have the same experience. Our lives and our experiences shape us, and they do it constantly. There have been lots of things in my life that have made me who I am, and that exact person that is "me" is always changing. Every experience you have, every change that happens to your life changes the way you read a book. Some of it I think just comes with age. I think it might be easier for my to connect with Hazel simply because now we're the same age, instead of her being several years older. Maybe it's the simple fact that I can't possibly imagine going through what she has gone through that makes me connect with her. Or maybe it's the little things. There are several scenes in that book, when taken completely on their own, are things I can say I have experienced almost verbatim.

Sometimes, the thing that makes a difference is a reference to a movie or song that you hadn't seen or heard the first time through, but that you get this time. Sometimes, it's just having a different perspective on the story as a whole. For me, there is one thing that I know is a big factor is rereading books. I read a lot of things at a young age. I was an emotionally mature, very strong reader, and the books written for 11 year olds can be pretty boring. So, I was reading Tamora Pierce, S.E. Hinton, Madeleine L'Engle, Lois Lowry, Julie Anne Peters, and even Ellen Hopkins as a preteen.

Almost all of Ellen Hopkin's book. All of these (minus Smoke and maybe Tilt), were out when I was 13.

Those are not authors that you would typically recommend to a kid that age (at least some of them), but I think it was good for me. Those books really did do their part in shaping the way I think, and the person I am by challenging my beliefs, and my ways of thinking. When I was about 12, I read a LOT. I can't remember everything I read, but my life was changing in ways outside of my control, and those books were a bit of a refuge. Books that challenged me, changed me, and helped me decide who I wanted to be.

Now, I should say that a lot of those books and what they really meant went completely over my head at that age (though not quite as much as you might think). Rereading those books now is a completely different experience. The experiences I've had since then make reading an Ellen Hopkins book feel so different. While it's not an exaggeration to say that Ellen Hopkins defined a year of my life practically (the year I was 13, I read all of her books at least twice), they hardly feel like the same books now. The first time I read them, they were what I needed them to be, and when I read them now, they are what I now need them to be, and those things aren't remotely similar.

So, my challenge to you is to read a book you haven't read in a long time. It doesn't have to be a great book, it just should be one that you enjoyed or that meant something to you the first time you read it. Now, how does it feel different to you this time? Sometimes, the changes are subtle, but I think they are always there. Humans change to quickly to ever experience the same book the same way twice.