Are you feeling that reading Romeo and Juliet for the 8th time is going to make you insane? You probably think to yourself, “I’ve already read this once, why do I need to read it again?” Well, when you read a book more than once, it is actually mentally beneficial.
“The habit of reading books multiple times encourages people to engage with them emotionally. The first time people read–or watch–through, they are focused on events and stories,” writes the Daily Mail. “The second time through, the repeated experience reignites the emotions caused by the book or film and allows people to savor those emotions at leisure.”
When reading and experiencing something for the second, third, or even fourth time, you are allowing yourself to not only appreciate the context, but also emotionally connect to the story in a new way that you might not have thought of before. Think along the lines of self-discovery and new connections. Same goes for watching movie or even visiting a familiar vacation spot. The more you experience it, the more aware you become of it and the more you are able to build on it.
Are you still skeptical that reading a story you know backward and forward will not benefit you in any way? You can check out more in The Journal of Consumer Research. The paper is titled “The Temporal and Focal Dynamics of Volitional Reconsumption: A Phenomenological Investigation of Repeated Hedonic Experiences.” Sounds technical and fancy, but it makes their point.
So next time you get your reading list for a class and on it sits a book that you have read and analyzed already, don’t think of it as a punishment. You will probably not only learn something new about the book, but also about yourself.