Oh, I reread like mad. Pratchett stands up best to this.

And right, Aims. I also have trouble rereading after the death of the author. Like, I just now started rereading L'Engle for the first time since her death in 2007.

I'm with you, P-C. I have so much to be read, I've disallowed rereading unless it's a really, really bad day and I need an hour curled up with Sara Crewe or the March sisters or, oddly, Sylvia Plath's letters to her mother.

I have so much to be read, I've disallowed rereading

If I want to re-read something, my brain will generally not latch on to something new. I can't work up any interest in something new that I previously really wanted to read, *if* I'm currently wanting to re-read something. I can't explain it. My brain wants what it wants.

I can't read new stuff at night. It keeps me up too late.

I plan to buy that Thurber collection(because we asked for it.) to read at night. Of course, some of them won't be as good without the voices and whatnot.

If I want to re-read something, my brain will generally not latch on to something new.

When this happens to me, which it does, and has been often lately, it's because I'm stressed and distracted, and then half the time I wind up tooling aimlessly around the interwebs instead and reading crappy fanfic.

I plan to buy that Thurber collection

Oh, god. Adventures in surreality: the day Tim's mom died, I took off work and went over to his parents' house. Because she died so early in the day, the funeral home came to pick up her body early, hospice came to pick up the bed and equipment early, and we had all the furniture back the way it always was by 11 a.m.

There is a Thurber connection here.

So by 2 p.m., the funeral director guy came over to the house to plan shit, and of course the whole family wanted to be in on the discussion. So I took the house phone, as well as everyone's cell phones, into the den to intercept calls so the meeting could happen without interruption.

I needed something to distract me, and there on a shelf was a Thurber book. I disremember the title right now. I read a good chunk of it before the meeting was over.

But the thing is, now b/c of the connection with that day, I have no desire to read any more Thurber. Sadface.

Well, I hope you want to, sometime. But I can see why you wouldn't. After my stepdad left us, the Simpsons made me too sad. It was so Our Thing. And there still are a few where the pleasure is kind of muted.

C.S. Lewis wrote that there are some books that we read breathlessly the first time, because the story is so compelling that we need to know what happened. Once you know what happened, you can read the book again to appreciate the writing and the characters. A great book can be read many times and each time the reader will get something new from it.

I tend to reread when I'm under stress, but I also frequently reread a whole series when a new book comes out. (I'm currently contemplating a Miles reread before the new Bujold.)

I've probably read Little Women, Eight Cousins and An Old-Fashioned Girl 20 times.

Some books I'll try to reread because I didn't care for them the first time, but I heard good things about them from people whose taste I respect. F. Scott Fitzgerald was an author whose books worked for me much better the second time around. Maybe the same will happen with Moby Dick.