When and how do you re-read a book you've already read?

What was the most recent book you re-read?

I'm half-way through Martin Chuzzlewit.

How do you decide whether and when to re-read a text?

If it's a book I've enjoyed and some chance thought makes me decide to revisit it.

Are there certain works you've read multiple times, and anticipate re-reading again at some point? Would you care to name them?

I periodically re-read the major Dickens novels. I've also read through the entire Aubrey-Maturin saga of Patrick O'Brian several times, and will probably do so again.

Are there books to which your response changed on re-reading?

I wouldn't re-read a book I hadn't liked the first time. My opinion of a particular character may change from one reading to anorher.

What was the most recent book you re-read?

Nonfiction: A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy by Wing-Tsit Chan.

Fiction: I've only reread one book in just about the last decade, and that's Anathem by Neal Stephenson. If I were to pick one to reread now, it would be Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed or Bob, or Man on Boat by Peter Markus.

How do you decide whether and when to re-read a text?

As you might imagine from the last comment, my general preference is not to reread works in full. On the only occasion in recent memory where I've reread a fiction book, Anathem, the purpose was to retrace my steps as a younger child and understand how that book inadvertently shaped my future.

Why do you re-read a book? What draws you back to a book when you're already familiar with it?

In fiction, usually, I must have lost my familiarity with it. That takes me a very long time; even picking up a book calls its contents back from memory for maybe 10-15 years after reading. Even then, I'd only consider rereading a book if it changed my thinking in some way, and either a) I wanted to understand how and why, or b) I had a sense of nostalgia for a thing-forgotten that compels me to revisit it.

In nonfiction, I read a lot of works that contain compelling information which I occasionally find it useful to revisit. I generally don't reread these cover to cover, though, instead picking out sections and parts that are responsive to whatever I'm thinking about.

What percentage of your reading time is spent re-reading texts you've read before, as opposed to reading texts that are new to you?

In fiction, just about 0%. In nonfiction, probably 5-10%.

Are there certain works you've read multiple times, and anticipate re-reading again at some point? Would you care to name them?

None that I've already read multiple times that I would consider reading again. I suppose I can imagine myself reading Anathem a third time, maybe in another 20 years.

Otherwise, there are a few I could imagine myself revisiting in the future.

• Anything by Ishmael Reed, frankly.
• At Swim-Two-Birds (Flann O'Brien)
• Pale Fire (Nabokov)
• Bob, or Man on Boat (Markus)
• The Famished Road (Okri)

Are there books to which your response changed on re-reading? Say you disliked it the first time around, but then liked it the second time around, or vice-versa?

For reasons that are probably clear, I abstain from answering :)

How do you justify re-reading when you have so many books lying around unread?

Well...

Just to get things rolling:

• What was the most recent book you re-read? Kumar Prasad Mukherji, The Lost World of Hindustani Music.
• How do you decide whether and when to re-read a text? It varies. I re-read Mukherji's because I told a friend a funny anecdote that I thought I had originally read in that book. I decided to verify, and used that as an excuse to read the book through. As it happens, the anecdote was in the very last chapter but I had misremembered some of the details.
• Why do you re-read a book? What draws you back to a book when you're already familiar with it? Again, it varies. Right now I'm struggling with whether or not to re-read Tom Jones, simply because I recently came across a used copy in good condition at a low enough price. I had liked the book a lot when I read it (but that was forty years ago!), so I bought it. With other texts, I re-read them just out of curiosity, to see whether the text will hit differently given that I'm older, or that I already know the ending and want to see what I missed leading up to it. With yet others, I re-read them because I know from experience I enjoy them and get more out of them each time. Sometimes I re-read a play (e.g., Richard II) because I'm about to see a performance. I re-read books on certain technical topics (e.g., music theory) in the vain hope that I'll understand them at some point.
• What percentage of your reading time is spent re-reading texts you've read before, as opposed to reading texts that are new to you? About 10 books I read in 2024 were re-reads. That's about 14% of the total number of books I read. But re-reads often go a lot quicker than original reads. I think I spent less than 10% of my reading time on re-reads.
• Are there certain works you've read multiple times, and anticipate re-reading again at some point? Would you care to name them? George Eliot's Middlemarch comes around every few years, as does Jane Austen's Emma. So does R L Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I re-read a lot of poetry but not necessarily entire volumes in sequence.
• Are there books to which your response changed on re-reading? Say you disliked it the first time around, but then liked it the second time around, or vice-versa? George Eliot again: The Mill on the Floss. I thought it was really silly. But it was a set text for a course, so I had to re-read it. I realized that the narrative voice was very intelligent, and I enjoyed the book a lot more when I wasn't worrying about its one glaring weakness—the plot. As for a contrary example, Raja Rao's The Serpent and the Rope deeply impressed me on first reading, but I thought it was a steaming pile the second time round.
• How do you justify re-reading when you have so many books lying around unread? I don't see the need to justify re-reading something I enjoy. It's like listening to a song I like. There are tons of songs I haven't heard, but why should forgo a known pleasure for an uncertain one?

• What was the most recent book you re-read?

The last book I re-read was actually a non-fiction book, John Keegan's History of Warfare in 2019. Since we're more interested in fiction here I would have to go all the way back to a re-read of Micheal Moorcock's entire Elric series which I undertook in late 2016.

• How do you decide whether and when to re-read a text?

There's no clear descision-making process for me, it's just a desire that rises up for a mix of reasons.

• Why do you re-read a book? What draws you back to a book when you're already familiar with it?

Lots of reasons. Sometimes I've forgotten a lot of the details and want to enjoy it again. Sometimes it's a beloved set of characters of world that I want to revisit. Sometimes I've learned something about the book in the interim and I want to re-explore the text in that new light.

• What percentage of your reading time is spent re-reading texts you've read before, as opposed to reading texts that are new to you?

Nowadays, as you can see from the dates on my initial answer, almost zero. This was a deliberate choice. I used to re-read books a lot, back in the days when I only had physical copies of books and I commuted a lot on the train. Those opportunities shrank and I began to feel resentful of my shorter reading time and, at the same time, I began to understand the huge body of work that I had never had the opportunity to encounter and, by extension, that I'd almost certainly never read all the books I wanted to in my life. So I deliberately focussed on reading books that were new to me. It's a fond hope that, when I eventually retire from work, I'll be able to have the time to re-read some more favourites.

• Are there certain works you've read multiple times, and anticipate re-reading again at some point? Would you care to name them?

The only books I've already read more than once that I would anticipate reading again are Blood Meridian and The Silmarillion. There are a lot of books I've read once that I would like to read again, if I had the time.

• Are there books to which your response changed on re-reading? Say you disliked it the first time around, but then liked it the second time around, or vice-versa?

Yes, probably several, but the one that leaps to mind right now is the His Dark Materials Trilogy. I was absolutely absorbed by this on first reading, so completely subsumed by the world and characters, alongside the clear thematic exploration of faith, spirituality and dogma, that I actually felt genuinely depressed when I'd finished, because I couldn't ever have that experience again. I returned to it several years later and, without the excitement of discovery to push the plot along, found it relatively trite and shallow.

• How do you justify re-reading when you have so many books lying around unread?

As discussed, I don't!

• What was the most recent book you re-read?
  Handling Sin, by Michael Malone.

• How do you decide whether and when to re-read a text?
  It depends. If there's a book that I really like, I may reread it, although I generally wait long enough that I don't remember all the details. And if there's a book I liked where I'm not entirely sure I followed all the details of the plot, I may reread it to catch the things I missed the first time through.
  Handling Sin is one of my favorite books — I think I've read it three or four times now. I reread Handling Sin most recently because I asked a question about it here — I saw in an interview that the author had said that it was a rewriting of Don Quixote set in the American South, and I didn't really understand why that was. Clara Diaz Sanchez wrote an answer that essentially said that she also didn't understand why Malone said that. However, after thinking about it, I think I figured out why he said that, so I reread it to support writing an answer disagreeing slightly with Clara's. (And I thoroughly enjoyed rereading Handling Sin, so it was worthwhile independent of the literature.SE question.)

• Why do you re-read a book? What draws you back to a book when you're already familiar with it?
  I mainly read books for fun. Most of the books I read are good, but not amazingly good. If it's been long enough that I've forgotten many of the details, rereading an amazingly good book is more enjoyable than reading a merely good book.

• What percentage of your reading time is spent re-reading texts you've read before, as opposed to reading texts that are new to you?
  Not very much, I haven't kept track so I can't give a more detailed answer, but I suspect I reread no more than three books a year.

• Are there certain works you've read multiple times, and anticipate re-reading again at some point? Would you care to name them?
  For a while, I reread Gene Wolfe's book Peace once every year or two until I managed to read through the entire book without picking up any new connections between various parts — this was probably on something like the tenth reread. Since then (that was maybe 15 years ago), I've only reread it once or twice, mainly to admire Gene Wolfe's wonderful prose and the remarkable way that all the various pieces of the book fit together so as to supply hidden details of a plot that isn't explicitly spelled out¹. I've soured a little on Gene Wolfe since then because of the treatment of women in some of his books, but I don't think Peace suffers from this problem at all.

• Are there books to which your response changed on re-reading?
  Yes, there are. There are some science fiction books I read when I was younger where I realize that the plot falls apart, or where I discover there was a lot more misogyny than I remembered when I try to reread them. For the other way around, there are a few books that I've given up part way through on the first time I try to read them, and discover are actually quite good the second time I try. For example, I didn't make it through Persuasion, by Jane Austen, until the second time I tried to read it. Maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind the first time.

• How do you justify re-reading when you have so many books lying around unread?
  As I said earlier, I get a lot more enjoyment out of rereading an amazingly good book than out of reading a merely good book. So I don't really know why I don't reread more books.

¹ By "isn't explicitly spelled out," I mean that you have to reread the book half a dozen times to figure out what's going on, and even then you're almost certainly going to miss some of the details.

I'm a heck of a re-reader.

• What was the most recent book you re-read? I think it was Michael Ende's Momo, about which more here.
• How do you decide whether and when to re-read a text? Usually, when the fancy takes me (see next bullet point). Occasionally, I'll re-read a book or part of one in order to answer a question on Stack Exchange, e.g. a couple of months ago I re-read the first few chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring in order to put together this answer.
• Why do you re-read a book? What draws you back to a book when you're already familiar with it? Nostalgia, basically. Sometimes I remember really enjoying a book but don't remember enough about it for a re-read to be boring. Sometimes (as in the case of The Lord of the Rings or The Neverending Story), no matter how many times I re-read a story or how well I remember it, there'll always be new things to pick up on. But more often it's like "ooh, that story was fun - let's go back and meet those characters once again that I only vaguely remember, refresh my memory and enjoy some smiles once again!" This is often quite spontaneous, e.g. a few months ago I re-read Prince Caspian essentially on a whim, after recalling some scene or character (now I don't even know what or who) that I wanted to revisit.
• What percentage of your reading time is spent re-reading texts you've read before, as opposed to reading texts that are new to you? I don't have a quantitative answer to this, but I re-read a lot. Partly because (now that I don't go to public libraries as much as I used to) books that I've read before are the ones most readily available to me. I guess fiction is one part of my life where I'm very unadventurous, sometimes even suspicious of new things that I'm not familiar with. (This is even more the case with films and TV series - I re-watch far more than I find new stuff that I consider good enough to watch.)
• Are there certain works you've read multiple times, and anticipate re-reading again at some point? Would you care to name them? As mentioned above, The Lord of the Rings and The Neverending Story spring to mind. But I'd probably be willing to re-read anything that I enjoyed, repeatedly without limit, unless I find that I don't enjoy it any more on one re-read, in which case that might be the last re-read.
• Are there books to which your response changed on re-reading? Say you disliked it the first time around, but then liked it the second time around, or vice-versa? Does it count if I read a story as a child and understood it on one level, and then re-read it as an adult and understood it on a different level? If so, I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, but once again The Neverending Story and Momo spring to mind. There's also books that I disliked more on a re-read (or even would dislike more as I remember them now) after grasping just how much rape was in them.
• How do you justify re-reading when you have so many books lying around unread? No matter how voracious I am, there's always going to be thousands of books that I never get around to reading, so a few more or less won't make much difference. Why not embrace a little nostalgia - feelings that one might never be able to capture with a new experience, no matter how good the new book is?