Forum: Story Discussion and Feedback

My reading Queue just keeps getting longer, but I find myself going back and rereading favorites that I just can't seem to put down. Does anyone else have this problem? Or is it only me?

Vulgus's Middlebury, oyster50's start with Cindy, Lubrican's EVERYTHING (sorry, started with him as Beating Off Bob), Marsh Alien's "Gigolo", rache with her eccentric humor that few seem to get and there will never be another like her, Tom Bombadill--where did he go?--

Does anyone have any advice for getting past this hurdle, or am I just doomed to an ever increasing queue while I relive the past?

My reading Queue just keeps getting longer, but I find myself going back and rereading favorites that I just can't seem to put down. Does anyone else have this problem?

I do, too.

HM.

My reading Queue just keeps getting longer, but I find myself going back and rereading favorites that I just can't seem to put down. Does anyone else have this problem? Or is it only me?

It isn't that bad for me, or maybe it's worse. The list of stories I repeat reading got longer over the years but my reading queue is disappointingly short.

My reading Queue just keeps getting longer, but I find myself going back and rereading favorites that I just can't seem to put down. Does anyone else have this problem? Or is it only me?

Nope I have been a long time member of that little club. My bookmarked list of writers keeps on growing every time I find something interesting. Then it has to wait until hopefully I can find the time to read it. Not to mention all of the ones I just keep rereading for some reason. And who can keep count of all those stories, both the finished and the unfinished ones.

My reading Queue just keeps getting longer, but I find myself going back and rereading favorites that I just can't seem to put down. Does anyone else have this problem? Or is it only me?

I think this is common. Apparently, given comments so far, so do a lot of others.

I've never considered rereading a vice. I think you can keep getting more out of a story each time it's read. I know that happened with me when I first discovered Robert Heinlein in high school. I read every book of his in our school library at least six times by the time I graduated. And in each book, I found something new each time I read it. Maybe I'm a bad reader (to miss so much when reading) but it is what it is, I guess.

Same thing here. Lost count of the number of times favorite Lubrican stories have passed under my eyes. Same thing for the other really good authors here -- Argon, Refusenik, Jan Cantrell, Al Steiner, Lazlo Zalezec, qhml1, Colin Barrett (recently) and others. The "Favorite Authors" feature in My Library gets one helluva workout.

If an author is good, rereading is just a joy. Like listening to a favorite song over and over again.

There are some really good stories that are a treat to reread.

For me there are two main reasons to reread a story instead of reading a new one:

1. Experiencing the story again. After several years, I want to reread good stories. I currently have read the "Dune" Saga every 8 to 10 years and "Nights Dawn Trilogy" every 5 to 6. But I don't know if I read Nights Dawn sometime soon in the future, I already skipped nearly half the chapters of uninteresting POV's in the last reread. Instead, I will reread the Commonwealth Saga from the author the first time.

2. to get the emotional response from the story, that I am currently looking for.
"Hyperion" is one of the few (or maybe the only one) stories, where the impact of a very emotional story point didn't lessen on the reread. (I'll only say "later Alligator", don't want to spoiler)

I didn't think I was the only one with this nasty addiction...lol. At least it's not fattening.

The real sad part is having to go back and reread earlier chapters in ongoing serials because you can't remember where things were when you left off.

I need someone to pay me NOT to go to work so I can just spend all my time reading. :)

I graduated high school in 72, long before there was anything but dead tree and a few audiobooks. I went through my small home town library (one room - about the size of a large living room) like a vacuum cleaner. Somehow they had the complete set of Tom Swift, Jr. books, all of which I read of course. The sad thing is that about 15 years later, after I was married, I was showing my wife the library, and went to see who else had read those books. No one else had. It made me sad to thing that the library spend so much of their obviously limited budget on that set and no one benefited but me. Later on in life I discovered used paperback stores. My favorite ran a '2 for 1', bring in two paperbacks and get one free. Otherwise they were like a quarter. Kept me going through some tough times when there wasn't much money available. That's way SOL is a blessing for me, and I gladly pay for a premium membership.

I have two rooms absolutely crammed with books, almost all of which have to go away when I move. 30 years of SF/F magazines. Started hitting the used book stores in 1972, I think. Still have some books my sister got via the Scholastic Book Service, back when Scholastic made their money selling paperbacks to kids via the schools. I'm now focusing on eBooks, they take little space and can be read offline. Haven't actually purchased an eReader, use software on my desktop. My memory is poor, so rereading has always been something I do.

One of the things I did after getting laid off after 9/11 and not being able to get a job in my field (IT), was managing the paperback racks at chain stores. Putting up new books, restocking good sellers, and removing the ones that were yellowed because the UV from the lights turned the cheap paper brown. Those we tore the covers off and threw in the trash, returning only the covers for cash. Selling a book without its cover is a copyright violation as well as theft from the publisher, and through them the author. With some chains I actually had to have the store management witness my throwing them in the dumpster, or let them do it for me, just to keep that from happening.