So, in the absence of supporting material, we'll build this contemplation from the ground up. To start with a definition, a re-reader is someone who at some point after a first reading, revisits favorite books for pleasure or inspiration. You feel that a book read long ago must have had a profound influence on your life, so you go back to see exactly what it was about it that made such an impression. When I saw John Wayne's The Alamo in 1960, I felt my life was complete. The next time I saw the film, as an adult, the movie's flaws were evident.
Some works are just too rich for total comprehension in one reading.
And I never could make out in which their charm consisted. The late Fred Gipson, author of the classic novel Old Yeller , a story of a boy and his dog, once confessed to me that he was guilty of re-reading his own book. But he didn't do it because he was in love with his own words. He was trying to figure out what had made his book so popular. If he could do that, he reasoned, he could use the technique again to write another best seller.