The Benefits of Rereading

Do you re-read? Lots of people don’t! They read a book once and they’re done. Some people will even unhaul a book straight after they’ve finished it, never to be seen again (By some people I mean my dad. Never kept a book in his life. Fucking weirdo). But I’ve always been a re-reader.

It started with me just wanting to experience a story again, I’ve re-read for so long that I don’t even know which book would’ve been my first! And then as I became more and more of a reader it then was pushed by me running out of books!! In the end I read and re-read my favourites so many times that they’re genuinely falling apart and I know the stories inside and out. Sometimes I would even just flick straight to my favourite sections and read from there! I knew the stories so well that I didn’t need to read them again to be sucked back into the world!

As an adult I reread less, and that’s essentially for 2 reasons.

1. I have more books!
2. I have “less” time

Reason 0.5 is also because I don’t re-read thrillers, mysteries? Yes. Thrillers? No. The entire enjoyment is in the suspense of not knowing!

As an adult not only do I have access to more books, being able to budget more for books in my life and dedicate more time to them, but also the internet is more of a thing! I have a kindle that I can buy a book from if I want!! This just wasn’t as common when I was younger! (and I didn’t have a bank account to use to buy them!)

And less time. As we get older time seems more and more precious, we realise that we don’t have as much of it as we think. And we realise that there are so many books out there!! Can I really “waste” time reading a book I’ve already read? Especially when I have over 100 of the damn things sat in my house unread!!!

But despite this, I do try to take time to re-read at least one thing each month. It lets me revisit stories that I love, as well as reminding me of just why I love them so much. And when I’m reading “so much” each month why not add a fun reread in there too! May as well make all the hundreds of books I’m keeping “worthwhile”! 😂😂

If you never reread and you have the change to pick up a book again? I recommend it! Give it a shot!

A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab | A Review after a re-read

ADSOM was my choice for the August prompt of “a book that surprised you” for the Booktube Rereadathon. What surprised me about this book was that I couldn’t remember any of it! I first read it in the beginning of 2018 and I honestly could barely remember what happened, and what I thought I had remembered turned out to be completely wrong, so it’s definitely good that I re-read this one! And I enjoyed it! We follow Kell, he is one of the last of the magicians called Antari, and he belongs to the Royal family. He can travel between the different parallel Londons, Red, Grey, and White. Despite knowing the risk, Kell is an unofficial smuggler, but when one smuggle goes wrong it leads to disastrous consequences across all three London’s.

First up that review from the Guardian is the most British thing ever: “A rather brilliant novel!” – okay, moving on. This book has a little bit of everything with knife happy main characters who will kill for those they love without a moments thought, as well as magic, villains, and morally grey issues. It’s all there!!

I really enjoyed the concept of the parallel London’s. It’s one I’ve seen before but never in this way and never with this specific way of travelling through. The connections that used to be there between the worlds also allows for a lot of additional world building to be done which gets us invested in the world(s) and it’s goings on quickly.

Kell himself is a fun character to read from, he has a staunch moral code, but it bends and flexes with his will. In contrast Lila’s moral code is strong and unbending, but she herself doesn’t know it’s full extent. The worlds that these two live within couldn’t be any more different, but their immediate ability to relate to one another, in an incredibly well written and realistic way, really makes the book shine.

Schwab’s writing is absolutely beautiful, she’s able to evoke the feelings from all three London’s with scary ease. She takes the typical fantasy tropes and manipulates them into something completely new and unique. I can see each of the London’s in my minds eye, they’re all very distinct to me. They almost seem to have a personality of their own.

The only reason that this book got 4 instead of 5 stars is that it didn’t have that spark. I know, I know. It’s stupid. But it didn’t and I don’t know why. Technically this should be a 5 star read for me, but for now it isn’t. However, I definitely still do want to read the sequel and find out more about these worlds and these characters! I can’t wait to see where Lila and Kell end up next!

Bad timing, Abi

The prompt for April for the Booktube Rereadathon was to re-read a book from a genre you don’t go for anymore. I thought I’d hit exactly what I needed when I spied my Animal Ark books in their box set on top of my shelves, and picked book number one: Kittens in the Kitchen. It wasn’t exactly the right choice to have made. Immediately after starting this book my own beautiful cat Tigger had to be put down. It made this simple kids book a lot harder to read. Thankfully, however, I do have the memories of reading it many times as a child and so I can still give it a decent review for you guys!

The whole Animal Ark series, written by various UK authors under the pseudonym Lucy Daniels, are wonderful books following Mandy Hope. An adopted girl who lives at her parents veterinary practice and who loves to help animals she finds in and around her rural village in the UK. Kittens in the Kitchen is the first book in this series and follows newborn kittens who’s mother made their home in the school caretakers laundry basket. He doesn’t want them there so Mandy and her best friend James have to take care of the kittens and find them new homes.

The two, in the short span of less than 200 pages, have to overcome prejudice against older and grumpy members of their village as well as learning to look after these newborns. It’s a lovely little book and I remember absolutely adoring learning about all the animals when I first read these books many years ago. It’s such a sweet series and despite the bittersweetness I’m glad that I returned to them once again to remember Mandy’s exploits and all the animals she helped.

Mentally Visiting the Swiss Mountains

I’ve read this story many times before, but not in a long while. I re-read it this January as part of the Booktube ReReadathon (as I mentioned here) ran by Alex Black Reads and Abi Mack Reads. The prompt for this month was a translated work, and Heidi was originally published in German by a Swiss author, Johanna Spyri.

I loved this when I first read it as a child, it really resonated with the kind of child that I was who loved being outdoors in nature and didn’t fit in with “well behaved” society. Re-reading it again as an adult I found it incredibly sweet, and I’m glad that I first read it as a child. Despite it being from the 1880s it has, in my opinion, aged very well and I loved the feeling of being free within the Swiss countryside and in the mountains.

I can’t find faults with the aim of this book, it’s a simple read which just aims to get children to appreciate the outdoors whilst not vilifying those who stay indoors for various reasons. I will definitely encourage children in my future to pick this book up and hopefully nurture a love of the outdoors within them.

Have you read Heidi? Do/did you read classic children’s books? Honestly, I still read kids classics and regular kids books and I love them!

Do YOU ReRead??

I did! And then I didn’t… and now I do again! Okay let me explain haha

When I was a kid I’d re-read books all the time, I didn’t have access to the shops without my parents (or the money to buy books anyways) so once I had finished what was on my shelves I had no other option than to read what I’d already read until the next time I got any books or got to go to the library. Now don’t get me wrong, my parents bought me so many books and we’d visit the library fairly often, I just read like a mad child and got through a ridiculous number of books!

Theeeeeen education happened. I live in the UK but I’m sure this is something that you guys from all around the world can relate to. I also had my various chronic illnesses kick in at this point, including migraines, and I just didn’t have the time or the energy to pick up books and read for pleasure with everything else I had to do. I still loved books though, which I showed by taking books with me to Uni, despite not having read in 3 years.

And then I did it, I picked up a book. I had to force my way through it. It wasn’t as easy as it used to be when I was a kid, it didn’t flow as naturally. But I did it. And that was it. That year I started reading and never stopped! I found this community and a couple years later I joined in as an active participant! But I wasn’t picking up my old books, I wasn’t re-reading at all. Now that I wasn’t living at home and I had some savings/birthday money I could bring books home without any issue and having found the Bookternet I had too many books that I now wanted to read to be able to justify the time spent on re-reading old books. It felt like it would be a “waste of time”. Which is sad.

That’s why I decided to do Alex and Abi’s Booktube ReReadaThon. To give myself accountability and to “justify” spending my time on it! I actually intended to do this in 2019, but that really just did not happen for a massive variety of reasons and so I abandoned it. But this year is my year! I have already read my re-read for January, the challenge was to reread a translated work so I went with Heidi, a book I hadn’t read since childhood!

I’ll be putting up a full review soon, but suffice to say that I really enjoyed it. It’s a lovely, simple and inspiring story that I really enjoyed diving back into and it reminded me that I really do love re-reading books. Which is why so many of the books on my shelves have cracked spines from reading them again and again and again as a child!

I’m really excited to carry on with this re-reading throughout the year! I’ve linked the challenges here and also Alex’s video and Abi’s video announcing the challenge for the year so that you guys can go and check it out!

Do you like re-reading books? Let me know down below and explain why!!