Reasons You Should Reread Good Books

C S Lewis said that you haven’t really read a book if you’ve read it only once. But why exactly is that? There are more reasons than just justifying an expense. It is perhaps because rereading old books can literally feel like revisiting old friends after a lapse of time of many years. You get to know them, understand them all over again and refresh tender memories of time past with them. But there are so many other reasons you should reread good books to. In this article, I’ve enlisted just a few of them.

Refresh and revise

It is no novel knowledge that memory has gaps in it. The passage of time blurs the subjectively unimportant details in our memory and cements the subjectively important ones, in order to accommodate new information. But cognitive neuroscience also tells us that elaborative rehearsal, or revision of information at a deeper semantic level, greatly aids memory. So when you reread books, you refresh them in your memory and cement details you may have forgotten over time. Basically, the process of rereading can fill in the missing gaps in your memory, and give you a novel understanding of the book in the process.

Explore nuances you may have missed

Rereading is not just about refreshing what you’ve forgotten but also about getting to know what you’ve missed the first time around. Books are huge works of art, and it is not humanely possible to understand them in a holistic way. But rereading can help greatly in that direction. While rereading, you can catch details that went past you previously, and you can also understand better the complexities of the novel. You can understand allegories, symbolisms and allusions, and look at it from varying perspectives. You could even look it at it through the lens of a literary theory.

Track your progress

The thing about reading is that it doesn’t just give you better insight into the book, it also gives you better insight into your own self. Basically, your understanding of a book reflects not just the depth of the book but also the depth of your capacity to understand it and engage with it. As time passes, you grow as a person as well. So when you reread a book after a time, you will probably realize how rudimentary your understanding of the book was before. This reflects that you have had a mental shift, and you have gained emotional and intellectual depth, which mirrors how much you can take away from the book.

Experience comfort and solace

Research studies have proven that rereading books can be a huge source of comfort because they have a calming effect. There is something incredibly calming and meditative about the act of reading something you have already read before. It allows you to stay grounded and be present in the moment. It also lets you experience the stillness of the reading moment and reflect on your past experience. This connect or bridging of the gap between the past and present is what keeps you rooted in the moment. Also, much of this comfort and solace comes from revisiting something that is familiar, because there is comfort in constants. During tough times too, rereading can remind you that there is something in the world that is unchanging and always there for you.

Invoke the same emotions

Books stimulate emotions, that is for sure. But the best books reinvoke the same emotions when you reread them. Again, this fosters the relationship of familiarity, because you now know exactly what to expect when you read the book again. Thus, you can pick and choose which books you want to reread for which occasion, and monitor and regulate your emotions accordingly. In a way, rereading a book increases the reader’s emotional quotient.

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