
Why reading a book 100 times is a great idea - benbreen
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/09/centireading-force-reading-book-100-times-great-idea
======
andy_wrote
Worth noting that Hopkins rereads his scripts because he is acting on them, in
both the specific and general sense of "act," and not necessarily for the
casual reader's pleasure. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that a professional
musician plays a piece > 100x before he performs it on stage, or that a
translator ends up reading the source material > 100x before she translates
it.

I do agree that rereading a book you enjoyed is valuable, but if you're not a
professional "actor" on the artwork, or you didn't passionately love the book,
I think it's preferable to wait between rereads, longer than would make
possible 100 rereads in a human lifetime. You're a different person than you
were 5, 10, 20 years ago, and you'll experience the same book differently as a
different reader.

~~~
japhyr
I'm almost finished writing my first book, an introductory programming book. I
have kept all of the drafts I've printed out as I've gone through the revision
process, and the stack of drafts is a couple feet tall now. It's kind of crazy
to look at that stack and realize that by the time the book is published, I
will have read the book about ten times. Reading it that many times makes me
understand some aspects of the book deeply, but it also blinds me to some
aspects of the book.

I can't wait to get back to working on projects. Writing about programming has
made me clarify my understanding of many subtle aspects of programming, and of
Python. I can't wait to apply my deeper understanding to a number of projects.
I'm also looking forward to reading other books again, after a year of reading
mostly my own writing.

~~~
shanusmagnus
As a fiction writer I can say the experience is much the same, though there's
the additional thing where you get really, really tired of your own voice. Or
at least I do. Does that happen in non-fic?

~~~
japhyr
I don't get tired of my own voice, because much of the text is informational.
One of my long-term goals as a technical writer is to include more of my voice
in my technical writing. That's the kind of technical book I've enjoyed the
most over the years - writing that is clearly informative, but also conveys
the author's personal experience with the subject. I hope my book does well
enough to justify a second edition, and I'll revise the book to have a little
more voice where appropriate.

One of the hardest parts for me is when the deadlines are pressing enough that
the revision process feels like work. If I can go totally at my own pace, I
just enjoy the entire process. But sometimes I have to push and write even
when I'd rather do other things. Even then, though, the process is really
satisfying. I want people to know how to program because it gives them some
power. Basic competence in programming takes away the sense that what we're
doing is "magic", but leaves people with a sense of joy at taking on hard
challenges and making something that works.

I might go back to some non-technical writing at some point as well. Writing a
200-page non technical book sounds pretty appealing after working through a
500-page technical book! Might be a nice sense of balance to do both kinds of
writing, in the long run.

------
justinpaulson
I've read Go, Dog, Go about 100 times to my daughter and she still yells for
it almost every night, we have hundreds of books, come on!

~~~
famblycat
I remember going through that stage with my kids. To keep myself stimulated
I'd add an extra bit here, a funny voice there, kept what worked and kept
building and building on top of the actual text in the books. It was like a
performance after a while, and of course, my poor wife would never do it
"right" when she read it.

~~~
jerf
When I'm not sure if the kids are tuned in or not, I randomly substitute a
noun with "gorilla".

Turns out they're pretty much always tuned in. But I still like to check
sometimes. They've moved from noticing it, to being annoyed by it, to now
making a theatrical production out of how annoyed they are by it (but are
clearly enjoying it).

As a bonus, it keeps me on my toes for the time most entertaining to me to
substitute:

    
    
        I do not like green eggs and ham,
        I do not like them, Gorilla-I-Am
    

_The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Gorilla_

    
    
        Goodnight comb and goodnight brush
        Goodnight nobody,
        Goodnight brush,
        And goodnight to the gorilla whispering "hush"...

~~~
gknoy
My 3 year old daughter asks every night (for the past month) for "The Napping
House", in which we have verious sleeping creatures stacked on top, with much
repetition. She ALWAYS asks me to swap the adjectives -- e.g., "snoozing dog,
dozing cat" rather than "dozing dog, snoozing cat". She gets it right every
darn time, too.

She even wants to swap the words that have plot-meaning -- like, why is the
mouse wakeful, and how does a slumbering flea bite the wakeful mouse? /shrug.
It's been my carrot to get her to try and read it herself.

------
SCHiM
One line in the article piqued my interest, as it echoes something I read
somewhere else. Seeing as it comes from someone who is an absolute expert on
the subject makes it even more interesting.

> "In both books, dense narrative tensions are never fully resolved..."

It has been noted that this type of recursion/layering is something that we
can't help but be intrigued by. This subject is explored in great detail, and
unparalleled depth, in the book Gödel, Escher, Bach[0] by Douglas Hofstadter.

He notes that this doesn't only happen in stories and is a common theme in
music as well and may even be the root of what we call 'intelligence'. I think
he's definitively on the right track, and I thoroughly recommend his book to
anyone that has even a passing interest in mathematics, logic, philosophy,
programming, music or psychology.

Of all the books I have read GEB has had the most profound impact on my life
in terms of how much it made me think and evaluate the world around me and the
ideas inside the book.

[0]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach)

~~~
MarkPNeyer
i've read Gödel, Escher, Bach cover-to-cover three times.

the first time, in high school, it opened my eyes to a bunch of cool ideas,
and jump-started my interested in computer science. i didn't 'get it' at all.
i knew there was a bunch of neat topics, but the idea that there was any
overall theme was lost.

the second time, in college, i started to understand the musical content a bit
more, and started understanding that there was a 'bigger picture' the author
was trying to paint. i still wasn't sure what that was.

the third time, after college, I think i finally understood what the author
was getting at - his model for consciousness. this was also the second time
i'd read the introduction.

that book has done a lot to help me understand the world, and particularly the
structure of my own thoughts. i don't know if consciousness _always_ works the
way he suggests it does, but i've found a lot of utility in viewing myself as
a recursive tangled loop, where physical symbols reflecting the external world
started reflecting their reflection of it.

~~~
Intermernet
I've read it 4 times, and people keep pointing out hidden gems I hadn't
noticed. Hofstadter has a remarkably complex sense of humour! (e.g.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egbert_B._Gebstadter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egbert_B._Gebstadter))

Although GEB is, IMHO, his best work, Metamagical Themas is, although a
compilation of previous Scientific American stuff, absolutely brilliant!

------
geebee
What a good article. Interestingly, I read this just after reading Bob Dylan's
pretty fascinating speech (delivered ac couple of days ago at musicales.

[http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-
gr...](http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-
grammys-2015-transcript-of-bob-dylans-musicares-person-of-year-
speech-20150207-story.html#page=1)

Bob Dylan stresses the importance of how many times he listened to a song and
how much of an influence it had on what he wrote:

"For three or four years all I listened to were folk standards. I went to
sleep singing folk songs. I sang them everywhere, clubs, parties, bars,
coffeehouses, fields, festivals. And I met other singers along the way who did
the same thing and we just learned songs from each other. I could learn one
song and sing it next in an hour if I'd heard it just once.

If you sang "John Henry" as many times as me -- "John Henry was a steel-
driving man / Died with a hammer in his hand / John Henry said a man ain't
nothin' but a man / Before I let that steam drill drive me down / I'll die
with that hammer in my hand."

If you had sung that song as many times as I did, you'd have written "How many
roads must a man walk down?" too. "

Dylan says this repeatedly about many of his songs (I really do recommend
reading his speech).

I do think there's some merit to this (though of course I don't think it's
quite that simple). It's also interesting to keep something in mind. It's easy
to do some things 100 times, it's harder to do other things 100 times. I've
listened to plenty of songs 100 times - I think the interesting thing about
Dylan was that he was listening to these songs with an unusual engagement, and
that they were (at the time) somewhat unusual songs to be listening to 100
times.

I'd say it's hard to read Joyce's Ulysses 100 times, but Ulysses isn't an
undiscovered work. Probably the real key is to listen to or read something 100
times that people don't realize understand the value of quite yet and that
takes considerable time and effort to understand. That takes some passion, and
a willingness to be considered a bit odd.

------
JSeymourATL
Recalling Paul Graham's recent blog post on the benefits of re-reading:

 _reading and experience are usually "compiled" at the time they happen, using
the state of your brain at that time. The same book would get compiled
differently at different points in your life. Which means it is very much
worth reading important books multiple times. I always used to feel some
misgivings about rereading books. I unconsciously lumped reading together with
work like carpentry, where having to do something again is a sign you did it
wrong the first time. Whereas now the phrase "already read" seems almost ill-
formed._ [http://paulgraham.com/know.html](http://paulgraham.com/know.html)

------
gregpilling
I call it 'comfort reading' like comfort food. It is one of the books I pick
up when I am lying in bed sick for the day. Usually something by
Heinlein/Clarke or maybe Asimov.

Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Tunnel in the sky, Friday, Rama, have all been read
5 to 10 times.

~~~
brandonmenc
Exactly.

I read the entire original Dune series a couple of few times a year, always in
bed at night - I imagine, much like people read their Bibles.

Having done it so many times, it's become "low impact" reading - appropriate
for situations where reading something new is "too much."

~~~
burkaman
All 6 books, a few times a year? I'm reading through the series for the first
time, and while I'm sure a reread goes faster, it still must take quite a few
nights. It is really good though, I'm sure I'll want to do it again once I'm
finished.

~~~
brandonmenc
If you read 20 pages a night, you can cover the whole series twice in 250-ish
days. Once you've read it a few times, you can get through 20 pages in like 15
minutes.

------
gitpusher
He never really substantiates the article's title. Why exactly is it a great
idea? That is, why read a single text 100 times rather than reading a greater
variety? Its benefits seem limited to niche situations (such as an actor re-
reading a script, or a lawyer re-reading some legislation, or an academic re-
reading Hamlet).

I do feel that certain books deserve (nay, DEMAND) a re-reading, in order to
fully appreciate their content. But 5-10 times is entirely sufficient for the
layperson, unless you're writing a dissertation on the topic. I'd much prefer
to read MORE books, than a single book again and again!

~~~
scott_s
Because it's comforting.

------
vedant
To anyone who might adopt "centireading" as a neologism, just want to point
out that the correct SI prefix for 100x is "hecto." "Centi" is a hundredth of
something, not a hundred something. Tons of people are "centi"-readers; they
make it through four pages of a four-hundred-page book.

------
zer0defex
I do this with audiobooks all the time. It's easier to passsively listen to
books I've already read since you can miss parts and still know what's going
on.

I never really intended to "learn" the books, but I've definitely noticed
improvements in how much info seems to be available in my active memory.
Really quite useful as it lets you connect related concepts in meetings and
chatting much faster.

Seth Goden just wrote a blog post about it actually:
[http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2015/02/can-sound-
wa...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2015/02/can-sound-waves-change-
your-life.html)

------
cllns
The author of this piece, Stephen Marche, has a great essay that appeared on
the Los Angeles Review of Books site last summer, called "The Literature of
the Second Gilded Age"

[1]: [https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/literature-second-
gilded-a...](https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/literature-second-gilded-age)

------
shalmanese
Other similar experiments include Cinema 52, where a group of people agreed to
watch the same movie, once a week for a year. Top Gun the first year, Back to
the Future the second year and Avatar the third year:
[http://www.cinema52.com/the-experiment/](http://www.cinema52.com/the-
experiment/)

Also The Lawrence Julie & Julia project where one guy decided to watch the
movie Julie and Julia every single day for an entire year:
[http://www.lawrenceandjulieandjulia.com/](http://www.lawrenceandjulieandjulia.com/)

~~~
bakul
To truly appreciate rewatching they should've watched The Groundhog Day every
week for a year. Followed by 50 First Dates!

~~~
shortimer
I've watched Groundhog Day probably 100 times. For six or so months, I left it
on repeat on the main house TV (I lived alone at the time).

------
lisa_henderson
I have read Hemmingway's novel The Sun Also Rises 5 times. It's a book that
has a lot of dialogue. It is funny to notice that it's the dialogue that
changes the most for me, when I read something again, a few years later. Maybe
on one reading I am in a humorous mood, so I read all the dialogue in a way
that maximizes the joking. Another time, I'm in a romantic mood, so I read all
the dialogue in a way that maximizes that aspect of it.

~~~
hodwik
That's only true for lesser authors, of which I am including Hemingway.

edit: Lesser does not mean valueless. It means not at the same level. To be
lesser than a master doesn't make one worthless, it just means one is not at
the highest possible caliber in their art form.

Mark Twain, on the other hand, is dialogue-heavy and yet you get a very
stronge sense of what emotion you're intended to read sections in because he
gave the characters much more flesh and blood.

To compare -- Hemingway - “I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted
to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you
learned from that what is was all about.”

Twain - "'Ransomed? What's that?' 'I don't know. But that's what they do. I've
seen it in books; and so of course that's what we've got to do.' 'But how can
we do it if we don't know what it is?' 'Why blame it all, we've got to do it.
Don't I tell you it's in the books? Do you want to go to doing different from
what's in the books, and get things all muddled up?'"

~~~
shawn-furyan
I haven't actually read Hemingway, but I assume the people that love him do so
for some reason. With that in mind, my interpretation of this comparison is
akin to a comparison between Rush and My Bloody Valentine, or Led Zeppelin to
Brian Eno, or Bach to Phillip Glass. The left sides of those comparisons are
much more explicit. The right sides are implicit, mushier, and more
subjective; they aren't necessarily intended to create a uniform response
among their listeners. This isn't generally considered a failing, and in fact
all of these artists are highly respected in different, but overlapping
circles.

------
legacy2013
I was involved with theater when I was younger, and would always read the
script 50-60 times outside of rehersal. Halfway through a 4 month production,
I would not only know my lines, but they would come to me naturally, leading
me to interact as if I was that character.

The book I've probably read the most is One of the Eragon books.... last count
I was at 24 read through. I really love that book. You do notice something
different every time

------
segmondy
I've read Hackers by Steven Levy at least 30 times. I should schedule a
reading soon. The book is as exciting each time I reread it, strangest thing!

------
nsomaru
Re-reading is good, but shouldn't we remember that time is also limited? What
I'm saying is: all books are not equal. Hamlet == Jeeves?

Also, there are different kinds of reading. Sometimes I'm just "consuming
content," and others I'm actually reading. In the former case, I get a dull
sort of continuous pleasure. In the latter, it's more like I'm engaging on a
journey with the author, which happens in fiction a lot, but the best kicks
come from philosophy.

A single paragraph from Schopenhauer[ __] may contain such high signal (to
me), the it requires careful scrutiny and thought. This kind of reading is
engaging with the text, but I 'm not sure that it would be worth it in the
case of Jeeves. Why go looking for water in the (relative) desert when you can
visit the ocean?

[ __]
See:[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8915729](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8915729)
for Schopenhauer's essay /On Thinking for Yourself/. It's a great read for
anyone who wants some well presented thoughts about reading itself and its
relation to thinking. Highly recommended!

~~~
bathMarm0t
That essay seems far too hardlined. "Reading is nothing more than a substitute
for thought of one’s own." -S

Really? I'm going to agree that your "consuming content" fits this bill (in
all mediums mind you. Mindlessly doing anything fits this bill), but I've
taken to reading used books with red pen, and scarring the pages with
excerpts, thoughts, counterpoints, interpretations, etc. I view that as an
absolutely critical part of reading now.

"and it may sometimes happen that he could have found it [some great truth]
all ready to hand in a book and spared himself the trouble." -S

You don't FIND these truths in books. The books bring out and expose the
truths that lie in your experience. Take, for example, reading the classics in
high school (Heart of Darkness, Gatsby, Crime and Punishment, etc). Those
books meant notheng to me. My experiential quorum was unmet. I couldn't even
vote on whether these topics were relevant (let alone true). It was only after
I experienced, felt, lived. Only after being could the books show themselves.
The authors feel the same way you feel, they just put it better. More
succinctly. We all have the ingredients, they just know how to simmer things.

Compare Schopenhauer with Hemingway (Death in the Afternoon)

"People in a novel, not skillfully constructed characters, must be projected
from the writer’s assimilated experience, from his knowledge, from his head,
from his heart and from all there is of him. If he ever has luck as well as
seriousness and gets them out entire they will have more than one dimension
and they will last a long time. A good writer should know as near everything
as possible. Naturally he will not. A great enough writer seems to be born
with knowledge. But he really is not; he has only been born with the ability
to learn in a quicker ratio to the passage of time than other men and without
conscious application, and with an intelligence to accept or reject what is
already presented as knowledge. There are some things which cannot be learned
quickly and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their
acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man’s life
to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and
the only heritage he has to leave. Every novel which is truly written
contributes to the total of knowledge which is there at the disposal of the
next writer who comes, but the next writer must pay, always, a certain nominal
percentage in experience to be able to understand and assimilate what is
available as his birthright and what he must, in turn, take his departure
from." -H

~~~
nsomaru
They way I read you, you are in complete agreement with S. -- That essay
expounds thinking for oneself over "much reading". That, or you're trolling.

The line you incorrectly quoted is: "It may sometimes happen that a truth, an
insight, which you have slowly and laboriously puzzled out by thinking for
yourself could easily have been found already written in a book; but it is a
hundred times more valuable if you have arrived at it by thinking for
yourself. For only then will it enter your thought-system as an integral part
and living member, be perfectly and firmly consistent with it and in accord
with all its other consequences and conclusions, bear the hue, colour and
stamp of your whole manner of thinking, and have arrived at just the moment it
was needed; thus it will stay firmly and for ever lodged in your mind."

Please quote correctly, your quotes are just gibberish.

Also, there is a "secret sauce" comprising humanity's prized possessions.
Would it were, eh?

~~~
bathMarm0t
Not trolling. My thoughts are spastic and impulsive. I'm working on it. Modern
take on being presented with answers:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ4o1N4ksyQ&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ4o1N4ksyQ&feature=youtu.be)

------
louprado
For those who primarily read engineering and technical texts, do you find you
have an unusually low reading speed when switching to ordinary literature ? I
expected reading-speed to be 1:1 inversely proportional idea-density, but that
never happens. Any suggestions for a techie who wants to read faster ?

~~~
jessermeyer
[http://www.spritzlet.com/](http://www.spritzlet.com/)

------
krelian
With books (and also films and video games), I feel that I read new ones so
that I may find the few that I would like to read again at some point.

The idea of being intimately familiar with , well, any subject, is very
attractive to me. The idea that I know it inside and out, that I have complete
control of it, is very satisfying. Unfortunately becoming a master of anything
takes a very long time so while I do fantasize on one day having the free time
to really become one with my favorites "things" the fact that I have less free
time as years go buy (and being a very slow reader) ultimately means that it
will be an unfulfilled aspiration.

------
abruzzi
I don't count my rereading, but for good books, once is never enough. When I
got the the end of "Satanic Verses" for the first time, I was so taken, I
started it again the very next day. Similar with "Against the Day". If I had
to guess, the most rereads I've done is ~20-30 rereads of "Cats Cradle". Part
of the reason for that is it is such an easy read, and I can usually finish it
in a day or two. Its also a great novel. I'd like to say I've read "Gravity's
Rainbow" that many times, but for its density, having read it four or five
times is a feat unto itself.

------
quarterwave
While the Jeeves stories are good, they can't hold a candle to the time when
lawlessness raised its head at Blandings Castle, or to the effect of
Mulliner's Buck-u-Uppo tonic on the Bishop and the Vicar (quoting from memory,
e.&o.e):

"Tell him we're a couple of cats"

"We're a couple of cats"

"Oh, that's all right then" said Mulliner as he stood aside to let them in.
The Bishop, being an artist at heart, mewed as he climbed in, to lend
verisimilitude to the deception.

A perfect storm of wonderful English prose with a boundless absurdity of form
and circumstance.

------
doki_pen
I keep reading The Idiot and Walden. The nice thing is that after you read a
book a few times, you can just open to any page and start reading. Walden is
especially good for random selection.

------
weavie
So, what books do people here think are worth reading 100 times?

~~~
bmelton
I've read "The Princess Bride" about as many times as I've seen the movie,
which, while I haven't kept a close count, is a _lot_. I don't know that it's
something I'd recommend to everyone, but the book has its own sort of whimsy
that is distinct from the movie, though both are enjoyable.

Kerouac's "On the Road" is another that I read often. Somewhere in the once-a-
year phase.

"Slaughterhouse Five" is another I read with some regularity, and I find it
different every time I read it, as I have a new set of personal beliefs with
which to apply to it approximately every time.

~~~
ashark
PRINCESS BRIDE (THE BOOK) SPOILERS

The great thing about it, IMO, is that the novel's not about the story from
the movie, really, but nevertheless you can do to it what the protagonist is
doing to the fictional Princess Bride book and tell it to your kids as if it
were the movie, by skipping the "boring parts", _i.e._ the important parts if
you're reading it as an adult. It's a great and funny adventure story for
kids, wrapped in a melancholy meditation on relationships with children and
recapturing lost time and experiences for adults[1], which is (rightly) absent
from the movie. The story itself tells you how to adapt it for reading to
kids. It's its own instruction manual.

I absolutely love the notion of a kid picking up the book as an adult,
expecting the story their parents read to them, and being surprised by the
discovery of the _real_ story, hidden from them in exactly the same way the
bits about economics and such were from the protagonist. It's simply
brilliant, and a scenario I fully intend to set up for my kids :-)

[1] This is from memory—I read it several years ago, and if I revisit it I'm
sure my take would have more nuance now, and would find this to be an
embarrassing misreading or oversimplification.

------
personlurking
I've never read a book more than once, not even a comic book when I was a kid.
I have, though, seen cerebral films (pretty much my favorite kind) as many as
5-15 times each.

What I haven't seen anyone mention here in the comments, is reading several
books on the same subject, but from different perspectives. IE, 2-3 history
books, by different authors, on the same country and era. This is something I
have done and do get a bit of enjoyment out of.

~~~
jkaunisv1
I really enjoyed taking that approach to the Vietnam war. It was edifying to
read a general who was there describe the exact same events as a journalist
writing post-9/11, yet only the location and time matched up. It made their
biases stand out so starkly.

------
hagan_das
Lots of books I want to reread but hard to justify when I already have more
books on my "to-read" list than I can read in a lifetime. I do, however, try
and re-read Dune once a year.

Off-topic but since I've got books on the brain: I recently started reading
the Foundation and am kicking myself for not reading it sooner.

------
GoofballJones
I'm sorry, I can't subscribe to this idea.

I have a finite time in my life, and there are way too many books for me to
read. There are so many books I want to read that it's literally going to take
me a lifetime as it is...so every book I re-read is a new book I'll never get
to read.

------
ternaryoperator
In the centuries before books became cheap and mass produced, a family would
own only a handful of books. These books tended to be passed around and reread
repeatedly. The modern period of being read widely was preceded by one of
being read deeply.

------
thret
Wouldn't it be better to simply memorise a book rather than reread it so many
times? I absolutely gain a greater appreciation for poetry after I memorise
it, I'm sure it is not so different to the experience he's talking about.

------
WalterBright
Reminds me of the academic who knew everything there was to know about Romeo
and Juliet, had thoroughly analyzed it, its roots, context, etc. And who'd
throw it all away for the joy of reading it for the first time.

------
hodwik
I wish I understood the desire to re-read books or re-watch movies.

It makes no sense to me at all.

~~~
goostavos
You're trying to tell me you've never, ever, once re-watched/read something
and found any enjoyment in it? You get everything 100% the first time?

I've watched There Will be Blood at least 4-5 times and still feel like
there's more to watch in there. Hell, I've also read some of Hunter Thompson's
short stories dozens of times. That rhythm is refreshing to revisit every once
and awhile. Sometimes the intricacies of the work aren't apparent on the first
go-round (at least to my lesser mind).

~~~
hodwik
Yes, that's what I am telling you.

When I was a kid I would rewatch things hundreds of times; My Neighbor Totoro,
Star Wars, Blade Runner, West Side Story but now I don't find any use in it.

What are you getting out of There Will be Blood that has you coming back over
and over again?

~~~
wernercd
Depends on the movie or book.

Some things are simple enough that once or twice through and you have all that
needs to be had.

Others are deep enough that you can discover and learn something new each
time.

~~~
crpatino
I'd go one step further and say it has to do with engagement.

If you find the book/movie pointless the first time, no amount of reruns will
change that. On the other hand, if you loved it and made you think about the
issues it raised, it might be worth going through it again, but a big part of
the extra deepness you find in the rerun will be placed in there by your
subconscious mind.

------
wazoox
Books I've read many, many times and plan to reread again: Umberto Eco's
Foucault's pendulum. Homer's Odyssey. Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac. These
never gets old :)

~~~
benten10
...Focault's pendulum... did you 'attempt' to read it six different times, or
do six complete scans of it?

I ask because every time I pick the book up again, I seem to read only half of
what needs to be read. Ideally, a binary algorithm like that would finish in
logarithmic of the book's pages times, but it seems to get longer every time.

Amazing book though. I just...can't seem to finish it. Eco and Rushdie are my
two biggest heroes. Now Rushdie's books, them I've read thrice for almost all
of them. Except the much-hated Satanic Verses, which I've read twice that many
times. It gets better every time its read.

~~~
wazoox
Foucault's pendulum: I love that book. The adventures of Casaubon and al
entertain me to no end. I've read it many, many times cover to cover, I've
typed in (in 1987) and run the BASIC program generating God's name, I've read
encyclopedias for details on the countless trivia in the book. really it's my
favorite Eco. It's so clever you feel smart just reading it, it's so choke
full with interesting stuff, so funny and ironic and meta-referential...

------
RockofStrength
Reading deeply vs. reading widely- an interesting debate question.

------
smoyer
As in "Fahrenheit 451", if you're going to read something 100 times, take
pains to memorize it along the way (it's not as hard as it sounds with
practice).

------
searine
One of the few books I've ever re-read more than once was Neal Stephenson's
Anathem.

I've read it four or five times now. There is always something new to find in
it.

~~~
CocaKoala
A lot of Neal Stephenson's work holds up to rereadings. I've gone through the
Baroque Cycle + Cryptonomicon maybe three times now, and I guess I'm due for a
fourth soon.

~~~
vitamen
I read Snow Crash once a year (usually I listen to the audiobook these days)
but I'm thinking of switching up to the Baroque Cycle. I'm glad there's
finally an unabridged Cryptonomicon audiobook - for a long time there was not.

------
drostie
I've read the ten Amber books by Roger Zelazny all the way through ten times,
which sorta-counts. A total read-through of those books can be done in a 3-day
weekend if you read the whole day, so if you want a rough idea of the time
commitment of a centireading, it's about a month of day-long readings. Another
way to view it is a task of reading two books a week for a year.

Like the Zelazny books, you need to have something which has the right "flow"
for you to really make it work.

My English professor at Cornell was fond of saying, "There is no good writing,
only good rewriting. There is no good reading, only good rereading." He calls
to mind how it's easier and more powerful to condense and re-articulate your
article/book when you know where it starts, where it ends, and how it gets
from A to B: then he comments, so too you get a greater appreciation of the
details of what you're reading when you can see the overall story.

In the case of the Roger Zelazny books, there was one section in particular
where this happened. We see a flashback from Merlin's perspective to a time
when he is a teenager and he takes his all-to-human girlfriend on an insane
journey through impossible landscapes which putatively exist just-next-door.
In the discussion that follows, it seems like, by not telling her his secret,
he's shutting her out:

    
    
            What could I say? It was not only that telling her of Shadow would disturb, 
        perhaps destroy, her view of reality. At the heart of my problem lay the 
        realization that it would also require telling her how I knew this, which would 
        mean telling her who I am, where I am from, what I am--and I was afraid to give 
        her this knowledge. I told myself that it would end our relationship as surely as 
        telling her nothing would; and if it must end either way, I would rather we parted
        without her possessing this knowledge. Later, much later, I was to see this for 
        the rationalization it was; my real reason for denying her the answers she desired
        was that I was not ready to trust her, or anyone, so close to me as I really am. 
        Had I known her longer, better--another year, say--I might have answered her. I 
        don't know. We never used the word "love," though it must have run through her 
        mind on occasion, as it did through mine. It was, I suppose, that I didn't love 
        her enough to trust her, and then it was too late. So, "I can't tell you," were 
        my words.
            "You have some power that you will not share."
            "Call it that, then."
            "I would do whatever you say, promise whatever you want promised."
            "There is a reason, Julia."
            She is on her feet, arms akimbo. "And you won't even share that."
            I shake my head.
            "It must be a lonely world you inhabit, magician, if even those who love you 
        are barred from it."
            At that moment it seems she is simply trying her last trick for getting an 
        answer from me. I screw my resolve yet tighter. "I didn't say that."
            "You didn't have to. It is your silence that tells me. If you know the road to
        Hell too, why not head that way? Good-bye!"
            "Julia. Don't..."
            She chooses not to hear me. Still life with flowers...
    

If you're just reading through this, it seems perhaps like she's gone power-
hungry; you sympathize with Merlin. But read through it again. Pay particular
attention to that sentence in the first paragraph: _we never used the word
"love"_, and then just consider the exchange, "It must be a lonely world you
inhabit, magician, if even those who love you are barred from it." / "I didn't
say that." On rereading, you realize that from her perspective, she's jumping
out into vulnerable territory, using this word which they've never used
before, and when he shuts her down, from her perspective he's basically saying
"I didn't say that I loved you."

~~~
samatman
I've read Lord Of Light a similar number of times. Try to guess why ;-)

~~~
tjradcliffe
I've just reread it for the umpteenth time. One of the very few books I keep
coming back to. On the other hand, I convinced my g/f to read it and she...
didn't enjoy the experience.

The allusiveness and ambiguity that I find so deeply enjoyable means the book
is just a hell of a lot of work to read, and not everyone is in to that.

------
ommunist
Upvoting this. Because the book always stays the same. Its the reader who
changes.

------
superuser2
I'm a stage manager. It's certainly true that the relationship theater
practitioners form with a script is much deeper and more rewarding than the
experience a casual reader forms with a novel, and a large part of that is
familiarity.

I'll read a play 5-6 times in preproduction alone, between an initial read for
pleasure, close reading for technical requirements, an inevitably slow read to
type an electronic copy, several proofreads of my electronic copy,
proofreading of the director's cut, etc.

There's a table readthrough first thing after the play is cast, and then (if
there's a long gap of time) another one at the first rehearsal.

And then there's rehearsal. The director and actors figure out at each moment
1) what does each character want, 2) what prior action in the play made them
want it, 3) what is the obstacle preventing them from getting it, 4) how does
saying a line contribute to overcoming that obstacle, etc. You don't
necessarily talk about this for every single line, but anywhere it's not
obvious, it will be discussed. (Different directors have different styles, but
everything I've seen is a variation on this.)

They also do a fair amount of "table work" and homework assignments where
actors invent their characters' backstories, prior relationships, etc.

I sit through _all_ of this, and it's my _job_ to be reading so that I can
prompt and correct lines, as well as (silently) figure out that a designer
should know about something, and add it to my report. We usually visit each
moment 3-4 times in this phase. So that's 3-4 very close reads.

Then we start running larger chunks - groups of scenes, then acts, then the
entire show. All told, probably about 7-8 passes through the show. I'm still
on book, and I'm getting a sense of how the pieces fit together. We
periodically go back to detail work on parts that the director is unsatisfied
with.

And then tech. 2-3 full tech runs where I am _completely_ engaged and in the
moment, calling cues. And then 7-8 performances, but that's cause it's
educational theater. In a professional setting, there could be a hundred.

At the end of it, I _know_ Streetcar. I have most of it memorized, I know what
everything means and why it's said, I know who everyone is and what their
intentions are, I know how the plot fits together, I know how the words are
supposed to sound, I know the pulse. At the end of my run, I had probably read
it 50 times.

People outside of theater/film don't really read _anything_ 50 times. I have a
lot deeper and more rewarding relationship with Streetcar than you do with
Crime and Punishment, and >50 passes through the script probably helped. But
spending dozens-hundreds of hours listening to professionals pick apart the
text and develop meaning from it probably contributed too.

------
ygmelnikova
tl;dr

~~~
ygmelnikova
So much negativity on this comment. It's a statement. This is the generation
of tl;dr. SAT scores are down, IQs are down since the Victorian age by 10
points. What percentage of the population would read the entirety of that
article, let alone a single book 100 times? That comment is both sarcastic and
ironic. Perfect.

------
pitt1980
wrong thread, sorry

------
rossta
I'll let you all know what I think after I've read the article 100 times.

------
Animats
This is the process used by some religions to induce obsessive religious
behavior in their members.

~~~
assholesRppl2
And the same process used by the Sun to keep us waking up every day! Damn you,
Sun, you religious zealot!

Sorry, I've had too much coffee, and I'm an asshole. But my point still
stands: just because some process may analogously resemble something else, it
doesn't mean it's the same process. The end goals are different.

------
nether
Why reading 100 books is much better.

------
tsotha
All I can think is your time must have very little value if you can read
nontrivial books 100 times.

------
normloman
I'm gonna read 50 Shades of Gray 100 times. Then I'll truly understand the
profound message that EL James was trying to say.

------
jkot
I read some books 100 times, but mostly technical manuals. It is good to have
some basic stuff in long term memory of our brain

Author is writer and should put disclaimer "...because it is good for my job
and I like it". Hamlet does not apply anywhere.

> It’s not just that Hamlet is a great piece of literature, either. It’s that
> every scene is a great piece of literature.

I read Hamlet and it felt like spoof of itself. It does not have a story,
every character dies, too many boiler plate dialogs. Perhaps it was great in
17th century, but there are better things today.

~~~
Retra
Hamlet doesn't have a story? I don't believe you've even read it.

