Quote:
Originally Posted by crossi
I have withdrawal symptoms if I go too long without reading something. I can't wait too long between books. I have, however, after reading an especially good book turned around after finishing it and gone back to the beginning to read it again.
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If I have read a particularly good book, I can sometimes put off reading again for a day or three, just to savor it for as long as I can. That's when my reading mojo was fully up and running. Over the years though, for one reason or another, I have lost contact with my reading mojo, and so sometimes there has been huge breaks. During those periods though, I may have been reading computer magazines and researching stuff online, and lost in my programming addiction, chatting on forums, playing guitar and writing songs, etc. Alas too many interests and so little time.
While I know my kids have instantly re-read a book they loved (i.e. Harry Potter or Eragon ones), I don't ever recall doing that myself. Not even when a kid who had very few books, and had to wait for my parents to afford the next Narnia or Biggles or Enid Blyton book.
My kids also re-read the previous book or books in a series, when the next one comes out, or just prior to its release, to freshen their memories. I've rarely done that, but I might re-read the last couple of chapters of the last book in a series, just to help key off memories. Mostly I just dug in and read the new book right away, not wanting further delays. That was back when I read books close to when I purchased them. And to be honest, I have always found my recall quite good, and it doesn't take much to recall even quite obscure elements, and just reading the next book will make them surface fairly easily.
Most of my reading life though, I have always had books in the wings waiting to be read, so more incentive to read them, than re-read one.
That said, I do deliberately slot in books I really enjoyed and want to re-read, which over the years may mean I have re-read some books once or twice. Lord Of The Rings and the Narnia books are examples of that.
The Wheel Of Time series by Robert Jordan, is a perfect example where there was a long break between the last one he wrote, and the ones co-written by Brandon Sanderson. I really felt the need to re-read the whole series first before tackling the Sanderson ones, but I did not want to wait that long. So luckily for me, there was a website, that had a summary of every chapter of the earlier Jordan books, and if you ignored the links you avoided spoilers for later book details. I had to avoid that last, because I waited until all the Sanderson books had been released and purchased by me, which meant some of them were on that website and cross-referenced. In fact, I built an ebook up from those chapter summaries, and spent a day or three reading that before starting the first Sanderson book. That brought me back up to speed quite nicely, with a lot of memories surfacing. I may do something similar for the A Song Of Ice And Fire (Game Of Thrones) books, when GM finally writes some more.
A part of me likes balance so much, that I do not like to have read books in a series an unequal number of times. But admittedly hard to comply with at times. Especially if there has been a very long break mid series. If enough time has gone by, then I don't mind re-reading before continuing on with later parts. I've done that with the Shannara series by Terry Brooks, where I only had three or four books to re-read, which I was greatly looking forward to, and they aren't long reads. In that scenario though, the series has completed portions within ... mini series within series. In the Robert Jordan scenario and George Martin one, I was and will be hanging out to read the next book ... no time to spend reading old ones, so just a quick refresher at best.