Reread or Not to Reread

There is something about this time of year that makes me want to reread books, I think it is the sense of comfort that I am craving.  It comes up as I browse for gifts, I see all the books I have once loved and wonder if other would feel the same. 

The other night, a friend mention that she had just read Rebecca and I was flooded with memories. Manderlay, the first time she searches through Rebecca’s desk, the ill-fated costume ball, and The Danvers.  Ohhh, The Danvers – the name alone makes me shiver.  I read Rebecca while preparing to student teach and I was absolutely taken away by it.  I loved it so much that it became my go to recommendation.  I immediately found it on my shelf and wanted to stop doing anything else to read it again, but I didn’t.

Then this weekend I was bedridden with the cold from hell and watched a Harry Potter marathon on TV.  I love the movies and I loved the books.  The third book, Prisoner of Azkaban was my favorite book and is the only one I have ever considered rereading. Watching the movie brought that all back.  That book was my favorite because it was so magical and so much of that was left out of the movie simply because they couldn’t recreate it.  I went to my bookshelf and picked it up, none of the other movies had this effect on me.

But here is the rub: I never reread books.  Other than while I was teaching, I have done it maybe a half dozen times.  I know people who reread the same books on a yearly basis and I absolutely can’t understand it.  How do you have time to reread something when there is so much more to be read?  This is what plagues me when I try to do it… the what if (Really, the what if’s have become the plague of my life lately.) So I am going to do it.  I am going to reread Harry Potter #3 and hope that my original experience with it isn’t ruined but instead enhanced.