Every week, I'll be making a pinned post inviting you to share your favorite books with the slop-hungry hogs of Hexbear yummy. Each week will be loosely structured around a particular genre, time period or other theme .

For the opening week's theme: Books you have read at least three times

Optional nerd discussion questions

What keeps or kept you coming back to them? How did your relationship to the text change across multiple readings?

If you have suggestions for future themes, DM me!

If you want to be pinged when I post the thread in the future, respond to this comment in the thread

  • charly4994 [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    4 hours ago

    I've found over the years that save for a few rarities I have zero desire to reread or rewatch something, I see it the first time and afterwards I don't find as much enjoyment retreading old steps. I absolutely love to discuss stuff and will go back to reread parts as part of a discussion, but going from cover to cover more than once is rather rare.

    I think there's a variety of books on the Titanic I read a few dozen times as a kid until I was the most obnoxious 12 year old reciting weird obscure knowledge and then promptly forgot most of it by 20.

    To continue on the series of "I forget" while I was locked on a psych ward with nothing to do other than study anatomy and physiology or read my English textbook/collection of short stories, I read that book cover to cover a fair few times since I had literally nothing left. While I don't particularly remember much of the contents at this point, I found far more satisfaction in the read than I ever anticipated after developing a deep hatred of reading literature through high school and the countless "this is the best book ever class, so you better like it and write pages upon pages plastering praise upon it." (Or having to read 13 Reasons Why shortly before this hospitalization) It was a chance for me to sorta rekindle an appreciation for stuff, I wasn't "forced" to read it and by just going through it, I found some stuff I surprisingly liked. While this didn't fundamentally change my relationship with reading, it did help me overcome some of that baggage from high school.

    Finally there's The Hobbit, never reread LOTR, rewatched the movies a ton as a kid, but the Hobbit was just a really fun book to read as a kid. It was accessible, the story was exciting, and the only somewhat good adaptation was the Rankin Bass TV movie which while nostalgia bait for me now, really doesn't hold a candle to just how much more vibrant the book is. The first time through it was interesting seeing a far wider setting and deeper story from the movie. After that it was more just a quick run through a story I just enjoyed. Rereading it never added much to the experience for me. Nowadays I'll usually just throw on the movie in the background since the music is fun and sticks in your head far too well and I'm pretty sure my attention span has been thoroughly burned out over the years.