Our book group coordinator asked for non-fiction recommendations for the group to read. Two of my favorite non-fiction books are "Incognito" and "Seven and a Half Lessons about Your Brain" so I recommended them. A member of the group asked everyone "Didn't we already read Incognito?" That innocent and basic question opens several lines of thought for me.
I taught a course to graduate students called "Personal Reading for Professional Development." We spent time recalling books we had ever read, from "The Pokey Little Puppy" Golden Book to the most recent texts on carburetor development or how to grandparent. The course met for 2 ½ hours a day, four days a week, for four weeks. The only required assignment was a list of the books ever read, without full guarantees that the list was exhaustive. Rather often, work in that course reminded someone of a book they had read in high school or decades ago that they thought of with pleasure. I often encouraged students to re-read an old favorite. Sometimes, re-reading was as pleasurable as the original reading. Sometimes, the reaction of the reader at an older age was quite different from the first time.
Ever since I learned of Prof. Elizabeth Margulis' book "On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind", I have been more alert to sorts of repetition, whether it is drinking another beer or kissing again or walking the same route again or listening to a recording again. In truth, we can always focus on the fact that the repeat takes place at a different time or the fact that later, we are older and maybe different.
Here is C.S. Lewis, professor of literature at Cambridge University in his Experiment in Criticism (1961):
In the first place, the majority never read anything twice. The sure mark of an unliterary man is that he considers
'I've read it already' to be a conclusive argument against reading a work. We have all known people who
remembered a novel so dimly that they had to stand for half an hour in the library skimming through it before
they were certain they had once read it.
We are older, maybe wiser, possibly more forgetful, might be more insightful, might be less. I predict that conviction and/or evidence will lead to the rejection of the group reading either book if we have read it in the past. I note that professors of film watch a movie repeatedly, that eaters order the "same" dish often but that many readers see little point in opening a book they read earlier. I guess that custom stems from enjoying the thrill of exploration and that will be diminished or absent reading again.
