Why We Love to Reread

An interesting penguin article commented on how Vladimir Nabokov once said, “A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a re-reader”.  It raises an intriguing question. Why do we re-read our favourite books, and what makes this simple act of re-reading a book, so enjoyable, that we never get bored of those books, no matter how many times we have, and we will re-read them? 

Abe books suggested a powerful reason as to why we should and why we love to re-read our favourite books. They state that for book lovers, “reading gives them purpose, helps them persevere through difficulty and unlocks parts of themselves they didn’t even know existed”. This shows how reading can make us feel “optimistically, breathlessly, tenaciously alive.”

Our perspective on the books we re-read will also change, each time we open to the first page of our old favourites. Whether you’ve gone through similar experiences, you’ve been inspired or affirmed by the characters or have taken something from a favourite novel into your own life, or anything that would affect how you view the novel. In a way, this creates an almost new reading experience despite the fact you are reading something you have already read before. 

A Mindlab International research study, carried out at the University of Sussex in 2009, revealed that reading was one of the activities that helped to reduce stress. This led to results that showed how after six minutes of reading a book, or any type of reading material, it was found that the stress levels of participants had been reduced by 68%. The reduction in stress levels could be another reason as to why we love to re-read books. It allows us to escape our hectic lives and every day personal struggles diving into another world. If we’ve re-read the book we’re reading to reduce our stress, it can be even more beneficial as we already known (yet enjoy) what is going to happen which eases anxiety, and when we relate to the characters, it could reduce our stress by affirming that who we are is okay and how our personalities make us act is okay too. We see all this reflected in the characters and plot of the book we are re-reading. 

Whether we decide to re-read books because it’s something we love to do at a certain time of year (personally, I love to re-read Harry Potter at Christmas) or sometimes we booklovers like to re-read a series before the next instalment is released. I enjoy re-reading the Invisible Library books before the new instalment comes out during the festive season. There’s also another reason for why we reread and re-live our favourite novels. We simply love the book, the characters, and the plot, and how that book makes us feel. 

In the pages of a compelling novel, we fall in love with it because it reflects back at us, pieces of ourselves. It reflects pieces of who we are and how we make choices, as well as why we are who we are and how we go about being ourselves in our own lives. We re-read novels because it “feels like coming home” and affirms or inspires parts of us, that we can carry over into the real world, once we finish reading or re-reading that beloved novel.