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Old 03-05-2016, 10:10 AM   #77
DMB
Old Git
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Would anyone question why I have seen multiple productions (both professional and amateur) of Hamlet? Or why I have listened so many times to Schubert's Quintet in C Major? If not, why should there be anything exceptional in rereading?

A lot of my rereading is more a question of looking up specific ideas or passages, to jog my memory. For example, in my mid-teens I read the entire works of Jane Austen. From then on I could usually remember most of it, but, for example, I often revisited the passage at Longbourn between Elizabeth Bennett and Lady Catherine de Bourgh. I could probably quote most of it from memory. But why did I want so much to revisit it? I suppose because it is a classic case of an underdog triumphing over a bully. And most of us may have been in parallel though not identical situations where we have done less well than Elizabeth in this one. IRL we probably failed and then cheered ourselves up by thinking of all the clever things we might have said. But here the author lets Elizabeth give a perfect response. How satisfying!

I do indulge in other kinds of rereading too. As others have said, it's like comfort food. I always read myself to sleep. Most of the time I'm tackling something new and perhaps a bit challenging. But there are times when I am tired, depressed or unwell and it's too demanding. So I have recourse to some of my favourite escapism, and it slips down so easily...
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