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Thursday, May 19, 2011
Summer Re-reading
I love my Kindle. (That was an uncompensated endorsement, but Amazon, if you're listening I'd be happy to provide you my taxpayer ID for a 1099.) One of the things I like I about it is that it makes buying a book seem less momentous -- you get an idea, you search for it on the Kindle Store, and boom, in a minute you're reading the first page. This has led me to buy books that I otherwise would not have bought, in particular, books I've already read. Right now I'm re-reading 1984, a book I haven't read since high school. It's such a rich book, and with thirty more years of life experience since the first time I read it I feel like it's a brand new read.
So here's a fun question to kick off summer pleasure-reading season: what's been your best re-reading experience? What have you come back to after a period of time that struck you as significantly different, more meaningful, whatever, as compared with the first time you read it?
Posted by Bill Araiza on May 19, 2011 at 11:03 AM in Books, Culture | Permalink
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Comments
OK, this doesn't exactly fit the question, but I recently re-watched "The Empire Strikes Back" from start to finish probably for the first time since it came out in 1980. Except for Mark Hamill's acting, it was far more complex and interesting than I remembered it. I remembered it as basically an entertaining vehicle for Star Wars merchandise. (That's right, I've gotten *less* cynical with age.) But the way the evil character drives the whole plot of the movie (which you don't really come to realize until near the end, in a twist that makes you look back at the events of the movie in a different light, somewhat Usual-Suspects-like) was fascinating.
Posted by: Bruce Boyden | May 20, 2011 11:54:05 AM
Bill, I read McCarthy's "Blood Meridian" in college, in the late 1980s, and knew that it was something special, but (in hindsight) I missed a lot. I re-read it not long ago, and was blown away. Also, I have re-read the "Narnia" books to my kids, three times during the last 7 years, and "seen" a lot that I missed as a kid (particularly Lewis's digs at education in the mid-century U.K.).
Posted by: Rick Garnett | May 20, 2011 9:09:45 AM
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