One Shot Limit

So I noticed that I never reread books anymore. Literally never. Not since middle school, at least. That was the last time I actually had the time to read books for leisure as well, after that I just got too busy. I just have no time anymore. Then I can’t waste what precious free time I have, so I spend it on reading new books.

And of course there’s so many good books out there! New ones keep popping up all the time! And I can’t waste the time I have, so I just read the new ones.

Of course this means several things. First of all, I can’t remember the exact plot of books that I loved a few years ago. Which is really annoying, especially if there was one character or one moment that I really loved but just happens to escape me now.

And it also means that I never give books a second chance. They get one chance to wow me or I’m never going to think about them again. And even then if they don’t wow me enough, I’ll probably remember them but never think “gee I should read that book again.”

And this is all really unfortunate because I have found that the meaning behind a book only gets clearer with reading it multiple times. Or one passage will mean something to you at one point in your life and something else in a different part. Maybe all of a sudden you get it and understand what the author was going for in a certain befuddling passage.

I mean as far as problems go, this is a pretty good problem to have. But it’s just really unfortunate that there’s so much literature in the world, you can never really know and understand as much as you want to. It’s a constant journey to an unreachable goal.