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Have you tried? I just reread the brothers karamazov at 29. I first read it when I was 22.

There a lot of it that I understand better, or differently, because I'm older.

The idea is to reread good things. Those usually have depth.

Actually, PG wrote about this: http://paulgraham.com/know.html




I have, and I always find that by the time I come back to a book a second time around it always feels used up or depleted in some way.

It's like trying to re-read an old math textbook after having gone through multiple higher level math texts afterwards. There may be a couple bits and pieces I was missing, but I had the gist, and so re-reading was a waste of time.

For example, one of the books I most enjoyed reading was Mahfouz's Madiq Alley. It built in me some of the cultural sensitivities of the early 20th century Egyptians. I cherish those sensitivities, but in my readings I have gone on and read other books that have further extended those sensitivities. Now, when I try to go back and re-read Madiq Alley I find it less than enriching.


Have you tried rereading any book that people consider an eternal classic?

A math textbook typically wouldn't fit the bill (though certain exceptional textbooks would of course) and Madiq Alley gets good reviews, but opinion seems mixed.

Hamlet, by contrast, is still widely read centuries after publishing. I expect Wodehouse will continue to be read long after we're dead (plus the author of the original piece had a personal connection).

There's no guarantee you'll like rereading of course. But I've found I can't reread most books, but others I can read many, many times.


If one of the greatest novels by the first Arab to ever win the Nobel Prize for literature doesn't count as an eternal classic then maybe not (Bible and Tao Te Ching not included, of course).

Hard to answer when I am left scarcely able to wonder at where you cut off such 'eternal classics'.




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