If you know me, you know that I never do monthly wrap-ups (which I guess is why this one is late?) but last month was kind of unusual and I wanted to talk about it! Last month, I focused exclusively on books that I had read before, from childhood favourites to books on my shelf that just spoke to me when I needed a new read. All in all, I read 31 books!! Which is honestly a lot more than usual for me.

Books Reread in May:

• Never Push when It says Pull by Guy Browning
• Don’t hit a Jellyfish with a Spade by Guy Browning
• More Adventures at Willow Farm
• Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
• Grit by Angela Duckworth
• East by Edith Pattou
• How not to be a Twit – Quotes by Roald Dahl
• Oh the places you’ll go by Dr Seuss
• Make Good Art by Neil Gaiman
• Empire of Tea by Markman Ellis, Richard Coulton, and Matthew Mauger
• A Thirst for Empire by Erika Rappaport
• A Social History of Tea by Jane Pettigrew and Bruce Richardson
• Lola Rose by Jacqueline Wilson
• The Illustrated Mum by Jacqueline Wilson
• Brave Story by Miyuki Miyabe
• The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers
• The Obsidian Dagger by Catherine Webb
• At the house of the Magician by Mary Hooper
• Emma by Jane Austen
• Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
• Persuasion by Jane Austen
• A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• Little Lord Fauntleroy Frances Hodgson Burnett
• Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter
• The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• The Painted Garden by Noel Streatfield
• The Secret Series (First 4 books) by Enid Blyton

Thoughts on a month of Rereading

Quite honestly, this was a restful reading month for me. I suppose that because I already knew what was going on (I’m the type of person that is happy to go into a movie with the ending being spoiled), I was able to take it easy and just enjoy the book. Ironically, this helped me notice things about the stories that I didn’t notice the first time around – I guess when I stopped looking for new things to talk about in a review, I had mental capacity to actually notice things. I wonder if I can transfer this to when I read new books as well.

Towards the end of the month, a part of me wanted to continue rereading because there were still so many books on my shelves that I wanted to reread, but a part of me was ready to start on something new. I was also reminded of all the books that I wanted to read while reareading – Ballet Shoes, for instance, The Book of Heroes, for another, and actually ended up with quite a few books that I wanted to buy at the end of it! I’ll have to comb through my posts from last month to compile a list.

Another thing I enjoyed was the freedom in the Daily Reading posts. I know not all of them had a point and not all of them were long (I mean, I even talked about books yellowing at one point!) but they were fun to write and gave me space to digest my thoughts about the books I had read that day. It’s been harder to muster up the energy to create so I was glad for this. The almost-daily rhythm kept me going and I was a bit sad to stop the daily posts.

Most of all, this experiment taught me to appreciate the books I own even more. In the past few months, I was always looking for new books and would either head to the library or log on to Overdrive to download a new book once I was done with the ones I had checked out. I completely missed out on the joy of rereading and ignored all the books I already had. I’m going to make an effort to reread a book every few new-to-me books that I read, so that I make full use of the books that I own. And I am definitely going to repeat this rereadathon in a couple of months.

What about you? Do you enjoy rereading books? If you do, do you dedicate time to rereading or is it something that happens organically for you?