The Magic of Re-Reading

I don't re-read often. Not because I'm against it, but because I generally have such a teetering stack of books to be read that I don't dare venture back into the land of those already read. The biggest exception to this "rule" (which is really more of a trend than a rule)? Fantasy novels, the crack cocaine of my reading existence.*

Most notable in this observation is my epic re-read of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, which took me two years (the now thirteen- and almost fourteen-book series tallies in at nearly 12,000 pages). I've read them all twice... some even three times.

I'm facing a similar situation with George R. R. Martin's epic Song of Ice and Fire series, which now counts five books in its ranks. I've read 1-4, and am seriously contemplating starting over again from the beginning before tackling Book 5.

Lord of the Rings? Harry Potter? Redwall!? Let's not even go there.**

There are dozens of books I'd like to re-read. The Thirteenth Tale, for one, which has such a wonderfully convoluted plot that I'm dying to read it again from start to finish and look for the clues along the way. The Shadow of the Wind falls into the same category. Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale is what I generally go to as my "favorite" book, when I'm forced to pick just one, but I've read it only once. Most of Marquez' books fall in with Helprin's.****

Ultimately, though, it's the magic that pulls me back in. It's the act of stepping back out of my world, this world of 9-to-5s and car troubles and airport security lines and Hershey's chocolate and cell phone bills and into a world where wizarding is a profession, and cars can fly, and people can carve gateways in the air, and chocolate is animated, and people speak through fireplaces and everyone knows in their heart of hearts that magic, on some level, is real.

In re-entering these worlds, I feel myself slipping back into the self that I was when I first discovered these faraway lands. I can rediscover my amazement with the imagination of these now-famous authors, who once had an idea, and who grew that idea until it was the size of a world, and then put it on paper. Whether for 10 pages or 10,000, I suspect I'll continue to return to these places... even if it takes me years to do so.

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* To be fair, I generally discount books that were required reading in middle-high school and/or college. Some of them I "read," in that I read enough topic sentences and chapter highlights to write a cohesive paper on them, and some of them I "read" in that I powered through them as quickly as possible because I had 500+ pages of reading assigned a week, and some of them I "read" in that I never actually bought the book and still wonder how I managed to pass that class. So. School-assigned reading? Not counted in the list of books I've already read.

** Ok, if we do need to go there, I'll just say this: I've lost count. I can recite the opening lines of Harry Potter by heart. I read Harry Potter in Latin. I first read Lord of the Rings when I was in elementary school, and have revisited it several times since. I've seen all the movies. When I was in middle school, my friend and I made a puppet video of Redwall. You get the picture.

*** As an interesting note, most of these titles contain elements of magical realism...