4 ms·

“What books do you want to read over again?” That’s a good Ask: HN question Do people here reread books?

anonporridge 3y ago
Very rarely, but yes. Generally only fiction. I have a specific category on Goodreads for reread books. Only a couple in that list, including The Stars My Destination and Manna. There's a handful that I might reread. The Player of Games currently tops that list.
theshrike79 3y ago
Very few. I think the only re-reads I've done is reading books to my kid. Ian M. Banks' Culture series is the only notable exception. It's just that good. Otherwise my stance on re-reading and re-watching is: there's too much _excellent_ content in the world to go through in a single lifetime, why spend time redoing something when you can experience something new?
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  For the same reason people. have favorite meals, favorite songs and favorite restaurants, I suppose.
  - theshrike79 3y ago
    The difference is, I think, that there is a limited number of foods in the world. You're bound to repeat and unless you're a billionaire, you won't have the time or money to cook a completely different meal every time for decades. On the other hand, with under a hundred monetary units you can get every streaming service in existence and have years of content available. For reference: All of Star Trek alone is around ~850 hours of content. That's about 100 days if you watch 8 hours a day. I did have time to watch it all once, when it came out at 45 minutes per week (except for Voyager, missed that). But how am I supposed to find time to rewatch 850 hours and still have a life? Why would I do that when I could watch 425 movies I've never seen before instead? On the other hand I do know some neurodivergent people who use TV-shows to relax, the fact of knowing what will happen in every episode is somehow comforting to them. My brain just goes "I could be experiencing something new instead of this".
pavel_lishin 3y ago
Yep. Mostly scifi novels that I've enjoyed a great deal. (This being HN, you can probably guess several of them quite easily.)
kbrkbr 3y ago
Yes, all the time. That's a way to understand how much I changed, like a mirror. Same with movies.

Very rarely, but yes. Generally only fiction. I have a specific category on Goodreads for reread books. Only a couple in that list, including The Stars My Destination and Manna. There's a handful that I might reread. The Player of Games currently tops that list.

theshrike79 3y ago

Very few. I think the only re-reads I've done is reading books to my kid. Ian M. Banks' Culture series is the only notable exception. It's just that good. Otherwise my stance on re-reading and re-watching is: there's too much _excellent_ content in the world to go through in a single lifetime, why spend time redoing something when you can experience something new?

pavel_lishin 3y ago
For the same reason people. have favorite meals, favorite songs and favorite restaurants, I suppose.
- theshrike79 3y ago
  The difference is, I think, that there is a limited number of foods in the world. You're bound to repeat and unless you're a billionaire, you won't have the time or money to cook a completely different meal every time for decades. On the other hand, with under a hundred monetary units you can get every streaming service in existence and have years of content available. For reference: All of Star Trek alone is around ~850 hours of content. That's about 100 days if you watch 8 hours a day. I did have time to watch it all once, when it came out at 45 minutes per week (except for Voyager, missed that). But how am I supposed to find time to rewatch 850 hours and still have a life? Why would I do that when I could watch 425 movies I've never seen before instead? On the other hand I do know some neurodivergent people who use TV-shows to relax, the fact of knowing what will happen in every episode is somehow comforting to them. My brain just goes "I could be experiencing something new instead of this".

pavel_lishin 3y ago

Yep. Mostly scifi novels that I've enjoyed a great deal. (This being HN, you can probably guess several of them quite easily.)

kbrkbr 3y ago

Yes, all the time. That's a way to understand how much I changed, like a mirror. Same with movies.