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When you get comfortable reading a lot, you don't need to re-read books. Certainly, a rare few books benefit from multiple readings but not all. I retain a surp
by british_india 9y ago
When you get comfortable reading a lot, you don't need to re-read books. Certainly, a rare few books benefit from multiple readings but not all. I retain a surprising amount of details and can describe passages from Dickens and the main argument of David Cay Johnson's "Perfectly Legal" or the amazing survival story of "Mawson's Will" or an amusing passage in Ernest Hemingway's journalism story "A Free Shave" or the images of the amputation tent in Tolstoy's "The Sebaastopol Sketches--to name a tiny few.
Once your reading is not going "put-put-put" and your unbroken attention span reaches an hour, you may feel like you need to re-read. Certainly, it's a nice experience but it's really a waste of time re-reading everything.
- jmartrican 9y agoI agree wholeheartedly for fiction, where reading for enjoyment is concerned. But even good fiction deserves multiple reads. Where rereading is more of an essential is with non-fiction. Especially non-fiction that is read for the purpose of obtaining and using the information. A few examples would be The Selfish Gene, How To Win Friends And Influence People, Better Angels of Our Nature, and of course The Art of the Deal. Ok maybe not that last one.