The Re-Read
I have a number of books on my shelf that I'd like to re-read, but I'm afraid to. I read them years ago, and really enjoyed them, but as I've gotten older my tastes have changed, and if I picked the book up today the experience would likely be completely different. Of course, it doesn't help that a lot of books don't age well, and what was new and different and edgy ten years ago started a trend that has since been done to death, and now having read dozens of books in the same subgenre with the same themes, the fresh and exciting book I loved on first read no longer sounds fresh and exciting. And well, sometimes there are themes of misogyny or racism or other horrible things I've gotten more sensitive to as I've gotten older that I completely missed on my first time reading the books.
A book that doesn't live up to your expectations is in itself not a huge tragedy. Depending on the build-up, it's usually not much more than a blip on the radar, something to make you shrug before you move on to the next book. But a book that doesn't live up to your memory takes away from the memory of having enjoyed it in the first place, and the only thing as delightful as the promise of an exciting, unread book is the memory of having come out on the other side of that book with something new to love.
A friend of mine was talking about this just the other day, how she'd picked up a book she remembered as being cheesy good fun and discovered this time around it was just... bad. Of course, everyone could commiserate with her, and some people even talked about how they'd lost childhood favourites by re-reading them as adults.
So tell me: are you like me, and keep a bunch of books you haven't read in years because you're too chicken to revisit? Or are you more the type of person who revisits frequently?
A book that doesn't live up to your expectations is in itself not a huge tragedy. Depending on the build-up, it's usually not much more than a blip on the radar, something to make you shrug before you move on to the next book. But a book that doesn't live up to your memory takes away from the memory of having enjoyed it in the first place, and the only thing as delightful as the promise of an exciting, unread book is the memory of having come out on the other side of that book with something new to love.
A friend of mine was talking about this just the other day, how she'd picked up a book she remembered as being cheesy good fun and discovered this time around it was just... bad. Of course, everyone could commiserate with her, and some people even talked about how they'd lost childhood favourites by re-reading them as adults.
So tell me: are you like me, and keep a bunch of books you haven't read in years because you're too chicken to revisit? Or are you more the type of person who revisits frequently?