The plight of any reader is their ever-growing TBR list and the sinking realization that there are more books in the world than they have the time and access to read. That’s certainly the case for me. So it often shocks people to realize just how often I reread books. After all, why waste time on something I’ve read before? Why not tackle a new book instead?

The short answer, of course, is simply that I enjoy it. I don’t need further justification. But I’ve been stewing on it lately, and I wanted share some thoughts on why rereading is important to me. (And for the second time this month, I find myself writing a blog post that I’ve apparently written before. Though in this case, it’s been almost a decade since that first post, so it’s interesting to see how my thoughts have or haven’t changed over the years.)

Part of it for me is simply logistics. According to Goodreads, I’ve read over forty books so far this year. That’s over a book a week, and it doesn’t even account for things like fanfiction (yes, I read book-length fanfiction on a regular basis) or the probably dozen or so books I read a year (some of them multiple times) for work. No matter how good my memory is, I’m going to forget details, or even entire stories, as time passes and new works take up space in my mind.

I not only read a lot, I read very quickly. While I try to still read carefully, it’s inevitable that I skim over or entirely miss things. Rereading a book allows me to discover something new, whether it’s a piece of information I skipped or simply a different point of view I hadn’t considered.

Not to mention, writing and storytelling are my craft and my career. Reading and rereading books is how I study, how I analyze story and grow my own skills. I can trace the development of plot and character, study form and format, and analyze structure and flow. I see deeper themes and nuance that I might have missed the first time through.

And because stories are my passion, there’s comfort in revisiting old favorites. They’re like friends, and picking them up feels like resuming a conversation. Some of those books, like Little Women and Anne of Green Gables, were very formative to my growing up years. Revisiting them feels like revisiting my childhood.

Something that most people don’t know about me (and I’ve only actually realized in recent years) is that I have aphantasia. You probably don’t know what that is (as I said, I didn’t for the longest time) which isn’t surprising, as the term was only coined about ten years ago. In a nutshell, people with aphantasia don’t have visual memory or imagination. If you tell me to think about an apple, I’ll think of facts about apples. I don’t see an apple in my mind.

That might seem at odds with my passion for writing. A lot of people assume I see the story in my mind, playing out like a movie, and I write down what I see. And while that’s the case for a lot of writers, it’s not for me.

All this is to say that when I reflect on stories I’ve read in the past, I remember the broad strokes. I may even remember some specific passages. But if I want to relive any part of that story over again, I have to actually read the book. I can’t call up the imagery in my head.

Do you reread books? Why or why not?

Until next time, word nerds!