There are lot's of different types of readers out there. And about as many different types of categorizing them as there are stars in the sky. Genre, style, author, number of books read at a time, when they read, why they read, etc. But today's post is going to focus on a specific type of reader (though it can overlap a bit with the why they read and number of books read at a time categories).This reader is often on a spectrum, though it is usually skewed one way or the other with maybe a hint of mid-line. And that type is, drum-roll please, the re-reader. Now as I said, this isn't exactly clear cut. My style in this category definitely isn't exactly one or the other, but it tends towards one type, which is sort of the point. I get a lot of people mentioning re-reading books, which I understand. Every so often there's a series that I love so much I know I'm going to want to re-read them. Books by Sarah J. Maas and Diana Gabaldon come to mind. But I don't re-read most books that I come across. I'll read a book, like say, The Hobbit, and think it's a great book and really enjoy it. But I'm not going to re-read it. While the number of books I'll re-read is still growing (that happens when you read a large number of books a year) I feel like it isn't as high as some people I know, which is why I consider it a style of reader. Either you love to re-read or you don't. In my case, re-reading is often directly tied to whether I purchase books. If I think I'm going to re-read it, or if I find myself re-reading it, I might decide to purchase it and add it to my library. Otherwise, I'll get it from the library. Because while there's many a bookworm meme out there complaining about Marie Kondo (remember, she said ideally have less than 30 books), I get her point. Now, I haven't watched her show or read her book, so I might be missing something, but I believe her point was that books can cause a great deal of clutter and unless you care about the books as more than just a symbol of status you should get rid of them if you want a clean house. Or, you know, you could invest in more bookshelves, but that can be expensive and not exactly feasible if you already have a lot and are still overloaded. Owning books for the sake of owning books isn't necessarily a good thing. But if you're using those books over and over and over and you take notes and find the little gems that pop out at you every time you read it again, then yeah. Keep that book in your collection. Which brings me back to the reader. And whether you re-read or not. I tend not to. There are some books that I do re-read. And a whole lot more that I don't. If someone wants to discuss them with me I'll probably re-read them. Or if I'm in the right mood and all the other books I want to read are unavailable at the library for some reason I might pick up something for a second time, but on the whole I am not a re-reader. This does not mean I don't have a large collection of books. I do. Most of them were free ones that i picked up at conferences. Which is great, except I'm moving and I know that most of them are not going to be ones that I want to keep enough to move them with me. Which means I have some hefty reading to do before I leave. And potentially some giving away before I've read them but keeping the titles/authors so that I can read them eventually. I feel like my point got a little lost up there though, so here it is. I don't re-read that often. But I know some friends that do. Most of the time it's because of similar reasons to me (most people I know don't re-read books that they don't like) but I feel like sometimes the threshold for deciding to re-read books is different for each individual. So you might have one person who re-reads way more books than someone else because that threshold for "liking enough to want to re-read" is lower. Where do you think you fall on this spectrum? Are you an avid re-reader or is your threshold pretty high? Let me know in the comments. Happy Reading!
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AuthorThe author is a librarian who reads "too much" (is there such a thing?) and talks just as much. As an aspiring author she gets bogged down by grammar rules when she just wants to forget them to make a sentence flow, but never seems to be able to. She appreciates thoughtful comments and constructive criticism, but internet trolls beware, she's read enough fantasy novels to know how to defeat the monsters. Archives
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