repeat offender

travelin' oma assignment number four

i rarely read a book more than once. several members of my family are repeat readers, but i am not part of that club. which is too bad, because i have a terrible memory for details in books. i could have read a book three months ago and barely be able to describe the basic plot to you. i will remember the general feeling i had about the book, but beyond that, i'm not very good about revisiting books mentally, let alone physically.

the funny thing is, i enjoy reading immensely and feel like i get caught away in plots and characters. but apparently, when it comes to long term retention, that's just not how my mind works and i haven't really trained it to be better (i'm similarly bad with movie details). this is why i failed a high school english test on crime and punishment when i had read every single page of that book, whereas my peers who did nothing more than quickly look at the cliff's notes before the test passed with flying colors. i think the book was so long that by the time i had reached the end, i had forgotten the majority of what happened. or maybe i wasn't paying too much attention while i was reading... but i digress.

having said all of that, i have only read a handful of books more than once, and that is usually because my bookclub is reading it, i happened to have read it in the past, and (of course) need to brush up on it. the only book that i have read three times (not including children's books) that i can think of is "to kill a mockingbird." oddly enough, this is the same book that travelin' oma wrote about for her post. actually, when i think about it, it's not that odd. it is a classic book, with moving themes and characters that speak to readers universally. i have read it at different stages of life and gained something very different from it each time. i'm sure this would be the case with almost any book that i choose to reread. knowing myself, i will continue to revisit it at future stages in life.

i know that i should reread books more often, especially given my terrible literary memory. i have a long list of books that i want to reread that i read in junior high and high school but was too immature to really understand. the problem is, there are so many books that i have never read that i also want to read. perhaps i should rotate in one reread every six books, or something like that. and maybe each time i revisit a book, i will remember a few more details than i did the last time.