Why Do You Re-Read? | Book Snacks Babbles

Hello everyone! It’s been a while since my previous Book Snacks Babbles post, but here I am back again with a discussion post! In case you didn’t know, here’s a little blurb of what Book Snacks Babbles is all about.

Book Snacks Babbles is an original discussion feature here at Book Snacks where I talk about all things bookish! For more info, check out my intro post here. 

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This topic kind of suddenly hit me the other day. There is a lot of things I can mention about re-reading, but I’m going to be focusing specifically on why do we reread books? We all know there are pros and cons to it, but we all have our reasons for rereading books (or for nor rereading books at all). Here are some of my different situations where re-reading might be needed!

• I hardly remember what happened in the first book, and the sequel is being released soon.
  

  This is one of the most common reasons for me. I can occasionally have very bad memory when it comes to previous books I’ve read in a series (especially if it was a while ago), and often times when there’s a newer book being released in the series, I re-read the first books to refresh my memory. Sometimes I’m lucky to start a series after all the books have been released, but a lot of the times I’m placed in a situation where I have to wait for another book to be released, and I reread the series in the mean time.

  Some examples for me would be the Percy Jackson and the Heroes of Olympus series by Rick Riordan. I remember reading those series several times as I waited almost a year for the books to be released. 🙂

• I loved this book!

  This one’s pretty self-explanatory! Sometimes there’s just those books that you simply loved so much, that you want to reread it just for the fun of it.

  Examples include… almost every book I loved? I’m only half-kidding. Re-reading books I love was something I loved to do years back. I don’t do it as much these days since I have so many books to read, but yeah. I can’t think of any off the top of my head!

• I read this book a long time ago, and I really want to read it again.

  I don’t think this particular kind of case has happened to me in a while, but there are definitely times where there was this one (or several) book I read a very long time ago, and I remember enjoying it, or I can’t fully remember what happened, so I read it again.

  One example for me here would be the Harry Potter series. I first read it when I was quite young, and of course, since HP is timeless, I have re-read the books several times over the years.

• The movie is being released soon.

  Yes, this is a reason! Sometimes there’s a movie being released for a book I’ve read a long time ago, and I can’t help but reread it before the movie is released. Or maybe I’m watching a book-to-film adaptation of a movie that’s already released, and I’ll reread the book. I don’t always do this, but I did do this before and I’m sure I can’t be the only one… right? I’m not sure whether I can truly identify the logic behind this… I guess I just want to book fresh in my mind for comparison?

  An example for me would be The Maze Runner. I watched the movie after it left theaters, and a few days before I watched it, I finished reading the book. I think I liked the movie more, but I’m not even sure anymore haha.

• I don’t feel like reading anything new, so I read some old favorites.

  Sometimes there are no new books that are suiting my mood, so I simply re-read an old favorite to get myself back into the reading game! This can work for reading slumps too. After all, if you’re in no mood to read, what better way to try and fix the slump than to pick up a book you know you loved before?

  An example for me would be when I reread The Infernal Devices. At the time I couldn’t find anything that really suited my moods, call it a sort of slump if you will, and so I picked up TID, and binge-read the series. Needless to say, I loved it and I got back on track after that! (Of course, this doesn’t work all the time, but it’s definitely one of the re-reading scenarios!)

• I don’t have any new reading material.

  This hardly happens anymore, but this is a possibility! Sometimes you simply have nothing new to read, no recent library books, no new ebooks, nothing. Only a bunch of books you’ve already read before. So the natural thing to do, of course, you re-read the books you have! I mean, there are just times where you have no new books. Sad, but it happens. (Of course, the opposite is true more often… too many new books!) At least we have a solution. 😉

  An example for me would be Divergent. I usually always have new reading material, especially as of late, but in my younger years, I didn’t have as much of a book collection, and so I reread the few books I owned when I didn’t have new books. At the time, Divergent was the one I chose!

• I didn’t like reading the book the first time, but I want to give it another try.

  There are always some books I simply don’t like. After I finish them, I find they’re just not for me. But rereading them may change the original opinion. Although I myself haven’t gotten around to this kind of re-reading recently, I definitely want to try re-reading Matched one day (not anytime soon though, for sure) and see if I like it better. Or maybe even Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.

• I want to see if my opinions have changed on the book from the first time.

  This is kind of like the reason I mentioned above, but it’s different because this is more of rereading to simply see if my opinion has changed towards a particular book, instead of re-reading with the hope of having a different opinion. I don’t do this often, in fact, I can’t really think of an example on the spot, but I do know that I have considered rereading the Twilight series in the past, to see if I still like it as much as I did back in middle school.

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So these are the main reasons why I imagine I and other people would reread books! Tell me; what do you think? Are you a re-reader? Which one of these reasons apply most to you? Don’t feel shy to let me know below, I love to chat and hear people’s thoughts! Just get comfy, and let’s babble!