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Comment by Aidevah | Hacker News Reader

>In the end, maybe the crucial difference between those who read once and those who reread is an attitude toward time, or more precisely, death. The most obvious argument against rereading is, of course, that there just isn’t enough time. It makes no sense to luxuriate in Flaubert’s physiognomic details over and over again, unless you think you’re going to live forever.

This is a curious argument. Does the author never listen to a song more than once?

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> Does the author never listen to a song more than once?

Listening to a 4 minute song isn't much of a time investment compared to reading a book.

Also, songs are entirely different beasts. They're designed to be repetitve — e.g, the chorus — and generally aren't plot-based, so there are no spoilers. And music is often more of a background activity than a foreground activity.

Reading a book isn't much of time investment, either, depending on how quickly you read. I read most novels in just a few evenings (sometimes just a single evening if I'm really into it), and then I'm out of books I'm interested in reading for a while. Even though I re-read all the books that I like multiple times, I still have more reading time than reading material.

When I'm out of books I want to read (which is most of the time), I just switch to some other activity — like watching YouTube or reading my phone — in the hour or two before bed. But these are a lot more disruptive to my sleep than books are.

If I had a policy of never re-reading books, this situation would be a lot worse.

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