“Mom, do you remember all that you have read in those books”, my son said pointing to the pile of books in the bookshelf. “How is that even possible, she will have to revise them”, quipped his cousin sitting beside him. I listened to their follow up chit-chat on why should we read so much if we cannot remember with intent.
The point was indeed an interesting one, reading books is one thing and learning from them is another thing. At times we brush off the learning idea by saying that we read just to enjoy the story. At other times we mention that fiction is to be enjoyed.
However, whatever we read, always leaves an imprint on our psyche. It can be fiction, non-fiction, history, spirituality or any other genre of books. We may not remember the facts and details as our text books but the core remains with us. Reading adds to our thinking, our understanding of life overall. Reading allows us the opportunity to learn about things which may not be part of our life experience directly.
Our learning from life can be very limited if we only learn through our surroundings, situations. Books break through the dimensional boundaries and take us to spheres beyond our life. We can feel, think and analyze situations imagined by others or lived by others. This broadens our perspective to life.
Coming back to the point, can we actually imbibe the complete message shared in a book in one reading. Practically, this is beyond the human capability, we may pick the main points but can miss many others around them. Revisiting the books can be a good choice in such cases.
Re-reading a book can surprise with something new. May be the sci-fi thrillers, plot-based fictional books can be not that much fun to reread. However, for philosophical fiction, non-fiction categories; there are many books that cannot be grasped in one reading. Having such open any page and read it, type of books is good to have.
I have reread many books. I cannot tell clearly if the message I derived in first read was same as in the following reading. However, it does leave me with few points to ponder every time. The book may be having the same words, but the reader in me changes with time. The same words can mean different depending on the reader’s mindset. It is good to revisit the already visited pages of known books.
