re-read – Only Mostly Dead

So. I mentioned this in my last review, what is it?

Well, you may have noticed that recently I’ve made reference to my less-than-great memory. I do feel like it’s not as good as it was and when it comes to reading I seem to forget more easily what’s going on (one reason to try to read books more quickly).

Also, I tend not to re-read as much as I used to. I tend to put this down to two things:

I have access to more books than I used to (both because of the internet and because I have enough money to not worry about buying them (I can afford to buy them far quicker than I can ever read them))
There’s simply so many to choose from (boy-with-too-many-sweets syndrome)

I was also pondering the fact that I seem to be able to remember a fair amount about books I read a long time ago. Is this because I laid down memories more permanently back then? Is it because I re-read more often and the ones I remember are one I read more than once? Is it a perception thing and actually if I try can I remember the more recent ones too?

So I’ve decided to do a little (hopefully fun) experiment. I created a little shortlist of 20 books I wouldn’t mind re-reading. They all had to be relatively short, enjoyable reads or there’s no point but other than that they vary according to how many times I’ve read them, how long ago I read them first, whether I feel like I can remember a lot about them or not. In order to not bias the experiment too much (the act of choosing a book involves a little bit of trying to remember things about it) I decided to choose at random from the list. The experiment will be done once I’ve read ~5 books. I’ll intersperse them with the books I am reading anyway and review as normal however when I do a re-read book I’ll:

Roll some virtual dice and choose the next re-read title
write down as much about it as I can remember
read it
write down what I got wrong, any major plot points or ideas I missed and so on.

Once I’ve done the 5 or so I’ll write up a summary and see how I did. I don’t want to do this as part of the reviews themselves so I’ll keep that separate.

RED Book 17: The Magicians – Lev Grossman

Ok, hang on, you’re probably thinking, haven’t we been here before?

And you’d be right.

So I’ve done re-reads before but this is the first re-read of a book I’ve read and blogged about before. The reason? Well a couple of things. I want to read the sequel and I always thought I’d re-read the first book beforehand to remind myself of key points. However the main reason was that the Sword and Laser YouTube show had it as their book club book for April.

So what shall I say about this book second time around? Well after the first time I recall being surprised at negative reactions to Quentin the lead character, and this was borne out by the reactions in the S&L Goodreads group discussions about this book. So I went in deliberately looking to see if I’d find him whiney, irritating or hateful. And I just didn’t. Maybe it says something about me I don’t know but whilst he lacks direction at times and he’s not an optimist really I still kind of liked him. I was never less than sympathetic to him.

Also whilst it felt like a little bit of a slog in the middle my favourite parts are towards the end so it left me with a good feeling. There’s so much in this book. It’s not that long – ~400pages – but it packs in scenes and episodes in a number of different settings and even worlds whether it’s Brakebills, Brakebills South, Fillory, New York after graduating, New York after returning and so on. I enjoyed that.

It drops a point for the slight slogginess but other than that:

7/10 – a good re-read.