What are your thoughts on this? I am trying to think of counter examples and the only thing I can come up with is mysteries. You can only read a good mystery for the first time and experience the plot twist once. On the other hand, even though you know what’s going to happen, re-reading shows me, at least, the clues the author left for me that I didn’t pick up on.
I recently read the mystery Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers and that is one book that demands to be re-read. I doubt that if I read it over 10x, I will ever grasp all of the references.
Like MarciaWAC, I rarely re-read because “so many books, so little time,” on the other hand, imagine if we never re-read Water Babies as adults, all that we would have missed. I think re-reading the classics or old favorites at different stages of life, definitely has merit.
I read far more non-fiction than fiction, and the fiction I read I go back to passages or chapters, seldom whole books again. On my list someday will be the first LOTR, but I need to read more of Tolkien’s other works first.
Rereading could be akin to reading the last page of a who done it. What’s the point when you know how it ends. I’m not particularly in to rereading. My motto is ‘So many books, so little time.” I will concede that great poetry can withstand being reread.