To Reread?

Interesting article from the New Yorker on the virtue of rereading a book.

Few would question looking at a great painting twice, or watching a favorite movie again and again. But, perhaps because rereading requires more of a commitment than giving something a second look, it is undertaken, as Spacks puts it, “in the face of guilt-inducing awareness of all the other books that you should have read at least once but haven’t.” It engages, she fears in her darker moments, a “sinful self-indulgence.” Never mind Nabokov, or Flaubert, who marvelled at “what a scholar one might be if one knew well only five or six books.”

I've wrestled with that exact issue. Should I reread something or tackle something new. In the last five years or so I've very consciously tried to keep grabbing new stuff. After a while I fall into a rut and go back to something that I already know. Maybe I need to drop the guilt.

Interestingly, I don't think that I have a feel for an album until I've listened to it a good half dozen times. Songs that were simply aural wallpaper turn out to be beautiful once they stand out. Upbeat songs that grab attention right away sometimes become annoying.
Hmmmm . . .