You should always read a good book twice.
The first time around, of course, everything is new. Well, it should be, provided the plot hasn’t been spoiled for you in any way. It can be a little daunting, especially, I find, in works of fantasy, to be introduced to new characters, new ideologies, and sometimes whole new worlds with expectation that you are able to keep up. But in good books (the term ‘good’ here is down to the reader’s discretion, of course) you will eventually find that moment where you comfortably slip into the world, and the rest is history. Well, unless you’re reading sci-fi. Then it’s probably the future.
The benefits of reading a book for the first time, of course, are that you’re in a constant state of speculation as to what happens next. Mysteries presented to you are mysterious, plot twists surprising (if done well), and tragedy heartbreaking. I’m currently starting a new series which I will disclose later, when I’m safe from spoilers. It’s been a while since I picked up a new book (as I’ll detail later) and I’ve found it very refreshing to not actually know what happens next. And, to be fair, it is a pretty damn good book. So far.
Reading a book the second time holds, I believe, just as much merit as reading it for the first. It’s a different reading. When I was younger I used to find it boring, as I already knew what was going to happen, but I discovered that once I’d left it for a few months or years, when it was no longer fresh in my mind, I could revisit the book or series and discover not only a story half-forgotten, but a story enriched by the foreknowledge of what’s to come. Foreshadowing became juicy, inevitable betrayals tasted tantalizing before their harvest, and tragedies were all the more bittersweet. Such foreknowledge allows a peek at the machinations of the author. What’s more, I find that on a second reading I’m no longer rushing to see what happens at the end, and am therefore free to explore the text at a slower pace, noting intertextuality, symbolism, and the occasional typo.
Of course, revisiting a book or a series more than twice is perfectly good, too. You may pick up on even more than you did on the second reading, though I do think that the second reading is where you’re most likely to make the most discovery regarding the craftsmanship of the fiction. If anything, on your further readings you’re probably likely to take away different messages from the story depending on where you are in your life. I just finished re-reading Darren Shan’s Demonata series for the fourth(?) time and took to heart messages about maturing and doing things you don’t want to have to do in life. (Perhaps not specifically the need for squishing heads, though coursework can sometimes incite such feelings.)
Speaking of which… reading past young adult fictions that you loved as a teenager, but from an adult perspective, is something I wholly recommend. I recently binged on all of Darren Shan’s works from my childhood, starting with the Larten Crepsley saga, working my way through the Saga of Darren Shan and then through the Demonata series. As an adult, I’ve been more readily able to appreciate narrative techniques used throughout these series and have thoroughly enjoyed refreshing these stories in my mind. As mentioned in the above paragraph, I also took away life lessons as I would from any other book, making this even more worth my while. And also, they’re just cracking good stories, to be honest. As an adult, I’m encouraged to read stories about a newly wed couple in the sixties nervous about getting down to business on their wedding night, but sometimes all I wanna read about is a scorpion demon popping eyes and laying eggs within, or about the war between two clans of vampires and the inevitable end of the world. Does that make me a child? No. Perhaps it just means that I prefer “readerly” fiction to “writerly” fiction, as Barthes would deem them.
So go read a book! Or re-read an old one! You may learn something, from both. Or you may just enjoy staring at blotches of ink on paper for hours on end.
Perpetually Perturbed 