As with literally every author I know, I love to read. When I find an author I enjoy, I devour their works. However, that doesn’t mean I read something and then discard it, never to pick it up again. In fact, I’ve found greater enjoyment upon reading something I’ve already read, for there are subtleties and nuances I missed in my earlier readings.
I’ve also found that books tend to change a little as I
grow older. Books I’ve already read once
are the ones I spend more time on as I read them again. I’ve stopped in the middle of passages and
re-read them so I can figure out what I missed the first time. I did this with Heir To The Empire, and there
were vagaries I failed to notice(such as the complexities of the Bimmisaari
marketplace). And what made it more
intriguing is that this was the first time I’d read Heir To The Empire in more
than ten years.
To me, that’s one of the keys to truly enjoying a book on a
multiple reading, to wait a while before enjoying it again. It means there has been enough time for it to
have some sense of newness while also not being something unfamiliar and,
therefore, uncomfortable. After all, the
feeling of comfort is one of the reasons to return to a previously read novel. I’ve done this with each of Tim Zahn’s Star
Wars novels, each Harry Potter book, The Damned Trilogy by Alan Dean Foster,
and I’m trying to start with The Lost Regiment again. With each reading, the comfort level grows,
just as the new levels of discovery grow.
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