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Comment by hodwik | Hacker News Reader

I wish I understood the desire to re-read books or re-watch movies.

It makes no sense to me at all.

You're trying to tell me you've never, ever, once re-watched/read something and found any enjoyment in it? You get everything 100% the first time?

I've watched There Will be Blood at least 4-5 times and still feel like there's more to watch in there. Hell, I've also read some of Hunter Thompson's short stories dozens of times. That rhythm is refreshing to revisit every once and awhile. Sometimes the intricacies of the work aren't apparent on the first go-round (at least to my lesser mind).

Yes, that's what I am telling you.

When I was a kid I would rewatch things hundreds of times; My Neighbor Totoro, Star Wars, Blade Runner, West Side Story but now I don't find any use in it.

What are you getting out of There Will be Blood that has you coming back over and over again?

Depends on the movie or book.

Some things are simple enough that once or twice through and you have all that needs to be had.

Others are deep enough that you can discover and learn something new each time.

I'd go one step further and say it has to do with engagement.

If you find the book/movie pointless the first time, no amount of reruns will change that. On the other hand, if you loved it and made you think about the issues it raised, it might be worth going through it again, but a big part of the extra deepness you find in the rerun will be placed in there by your subconscious mind.

There are definitely lot's of movies, that show you something new (where you see something new?), each time you watch them.

It's small details. Some new connection. Maybe the mood you're in changes the way you interpret a scene (or the whole movie). Maybe your personal experiences since you last watched the movie let you see it in a new (personal) light.

The same applies to books. Even more so maybe. With books you make the movie in your head, so it's more open to your interpretation, and thus changes more according to your mood etc.

I don't know about 100x, but I've reread / re-watches some movies and books to much joy.

Are you the same with other forms of leisure and entertainment? Never walk through the same park twice, never see the same band twice, never order the same dish at the same restaurant twice?

Of course, aren't you?

One of my favourite books is The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Three reads and counting...

A friend of mine recently became a father and says that he reread the book and saw it in a completely different light as a result of having a son of his own.

Books don't change over time, but I'm pretty sure that your life situation and experiences can to the extent that a book becomes open to a new interpretation.

I read this once and didn't stop until I finished it about 5-6 hours later. At the time my son was similar age to the boy and I found it deeply affecting. I regard it as a one of the finest books I have ever read, yet cannot imagine reading it again as I can't imagine having the same emotional experience.

In my early teens I watched Alien the first time, I thought it was boring and lamer than Aliens.

In my twenties, I decided to watch both again, and it was only then I could deeply appreciated the brilliance of a true genuine horror sci-fi movie.

I went through a phase like you describe - where I was consuming media (books, television, film, anything) as a means of exploring. With exploring you're focusing on learning, on looking outward. I've only recently come back to re-experiencing things.

It's definitely best when you get to explore the historical themes of media then go back to something. For a very basic example - watch Lion King, read Hamlet, then go back and re-watch Lion King, you'll pick up things you hadn't the first time (works best if you wait some time).

It turns out this also helps me determine the quality of whatever media I'm consuming. Only particularly fantastic things keep being enjoyable. But I won't let that stop me from enjoying the latest Transformers movie ;)

You change. You gain perspective. You focus on different bits. And you miss things the first time round. Take the Iliad. A young kid might love the gory tongue-splitting spear through the head of the enemy fighting scenes of the Iliad. Later on in life you might dwell on the fact that a good chunk of the story is dedicated to humanizing Hector, the hero of the enemy. Showing us his concern about the fate of his wife and children if Troy does, in the end, get sacked. then again, i can't get my wife to watch or read something twice ever.

I watched the Godfather when I was 13, and I thought it was a movie about criminals and not a good one at that. I watched it at 33 and realized it's the best movie about family ever made.

It might be similar to the reason/a stronger version of/ why people still keep taking in stories of the same kind.

There are a few ideas rehashed over and over, and some of them go a loooong way back (one reason why stories of other cultures are interesting - they have other patterns). Forbidden love, son-father relationships, coming-of-age, ... (look at Star Wars and find those, for example)

If you take care, you can probably predict the storyline for most movies as you go along, save for a few variations the themes have (so you'd have to predict for two storylines and guess which one it is going to be). It is a human ability, really, that builds our societies when we agree on what can happen. And most people seem to like this kind of storytelling. It's rare to find new ideas.

Just some thoughts. </rant>

That stuff is formulaic, absolutely, which is why you don't watch movies for that stuff, right?

That stuff just becomes background noise for the contained art: be that art acting, cinematography, art direction, dialogue writing, etc.

Which is what we read for too, right? The poetry in the prose, the setting, the interesting facts sprinkled in the story, the art of the dialogue -- the story is background to the art of novel writing, it seems to me, the same way that plot is background to film.

It's been my opinion for a while that the "meaning" in a work of art or in the sentences we use to communicate is found where it differs from the established pattern. For example, this very sentence follows the same general outline of thousands of other sentences. The actual meaning is found where it breaks with the pattern.

Another simple example would be image macros. They often follow a very strict pattern; the new information the user wishes to convey is where the pattern is broken.

In the same way, stories often follow a number of tropes. These tropes help to establish some basic information about the story, but what really makes it interesting is when the story breaks from the pattern and does something new.

Honest question, do you listen to music more than once? If so, how come it's different than other art-forms for you?

Yes I do, albeit less often than most people.

I think, mostly, because re-listening to a song is not time consuming, so I don't feel particularly guilty for wasting that time.

Secondarily, because I am a musician, so I care about the technical minutiae of the craft, which one must listen many times to discover the intricacies of. I have no such desire to learn the technical minutiae of the craft of fiction writing.

Are you an aspiring writer, and does that inform your desire to reread particularly well-written texts?

No, but I used to work in film, so for me there's a ton to learn and appreciate about the craft - camerawork, writing, pacing, editing, performances, sets, locations - the creation of an immersive world that you experience with the characters.

Have you tried? I just reread the brothers karamazov at 29. I first read it when I was 22.

There a lot of it that I understand better, or differently, because I'm older.

The idea is to reread good things. Those usually have depth.

Actually, PG wrote about this: http://paulgraham.com/know.html

I have, and I always find that by the time I come back to a book a second time around it always feels used up or depleted in some way.

It's like trying to re-read an old math textbook after having gone through multiple higher level math texts afterwards. There may be a couple bits and pieces I was missing, but I had the gist, and so re-reading was a waste of time.

For example, one of the books I most enjoyed reading was Mahfouz's Madiq Alley. It built in me some of the cultural sensitivities of the early 20th century Egyptians. I cherish those sensitivities, but in my readings I have gone on and read other books that have further extended those sensitivities. Now, when I try to go back and re-read Madiq Alley I find it less than enriching.

Have you tried rereading any book that people consider an eternal classic?

A math textbook typically wouldn't fit the bill (though certain exceptional textbooks would of course) and Madiq Alley gets good reviews, but opinion seems mixed.

Hamlet, by contrast, is still widely read centuries after publishing. I expect Wodehouse will continue to be read long after we're dead (plus the author of the original piece had a personal connection).

There's no guarantee you'll like rereading of course. But I've found I can't reread most books, but others I can read many, many times.

If one of the greatest novels by the first Arab to ever win the Nobel Prize for literature doesn't count as an eternal classic then maybe not (Bible and Tao Te Ching not included, of course).

Hard to answer when I am left scarcely able to wonder at where you cut off such 'eternal classics'.

Not sure about films, but I think if the book is sufficiently deep it bares re-reading.

For instance, I first read the Thomas Covenant books when I was maybe 15. I'm pretty sure a good 50% of the subtlety went over my head at that age. I'd hope at 43 I'd understand more of it now. Any maybe even more when I'm 60.

I think the key it to gain appreciation for something more than just the plot.

There are different kinds of enjoyment. On a certain level in our brains, we have different kinds of needs.

One need is for novelty. The other is a need for familiarity or confirmation.

When we enjoy something, when we feel something that is fun, it goes along in this process: We encounter something new, we remember it, we predict a result, and we have that response confirmed or we are surprised. If we are surprised, we learn the new result, and next time we try to use that experience to predict the next result. When we are right, we are satisfied that we predicted the correct response and that feels good.

It's both the surprise, and the confirming of expectation that feels good in different ways. Music follows this pattern too. You listen to a song, if you've heard it before it triggers a memory and you sing along as much as you can remember. If you listen to a song for the first time, it repeats itself, so you learn the first verse, and then you recall it for the second one.

Music that is too unpredictable is just noise, it's not as easily enjoyable as normal music. Music that is too repetitive is not enjoyable either, it gets annoying and tiresome.

And that's sort of the thing. As you are satisfied with your recall, the good feelings from that start to fade. Hearing the refrain and then signing along the next time you hear it is satisfying. Hearing it 60 times makes you really wish you could listen to a different song.

But if you are with a friend who skips through the first measures of 60 songs, you're going to go nuts and want him to just stop and pick some song to listen to fully.

We balance the desire for novelty and for familiarity. This isn't just in music or entertainment or books. This is also in life. When we turn to entertainment, we look for things that fill the needs that we're otherwise missing.

If you hate to re-read books, you have little craving for familiarity, and you are seeking novelty. You probably don't enjoy listening to the same music album over and over either.

This might just be your personality, some people just crave novelty more than others. It might be because of what you do with the rest of your time, you might have a really repetitive day job and want some kind of novelty in your spare time.

My day job is pretty dynamic. It alternates between nose-to-the-grindstone drudgery and constantly dealing with new problems and coming up with new solutions.

If I have a day where I'm going through paperwork, and doing data entry for hours, then when I get home I really need to do something new. I need to find a new movie. I need to play a game I've never played before. I need to go somewhere or do something new.

On the other hand, if I've had a week where I'm constantly doing new things, solving new unexpected problems, I come home tired and I want to watch Star Trek, I want to play a game that I've finished. I want to remember, to do better, but not see something necessarily brand new.

I'd recommend that you try to do it anyways. It might be something you enjoy.

I found your line of thinking very interesting --

Perhaps I just don't have the familiarity desire gene at all.

In work I actually don't have any drudgery, that's why I picked this job -- I work for a small tech company, and spend each day on vastly different things: programming small applications, design/UX, cartooning/animating, writing, teaching courses, travelling, researching new technologies, etc. I was hired because that's the sort of environment in which I thrive, and the company needed that kind of person. During the interview, they asked if I would go to Botswana next week if I got hired today. I told them I would die to go to Botswana next week.

Before this I was a private investigator for 3 years, it wasn't boring, before that was 2 years of working in publishing, before that a year as a horse handler for a police force, before that I worked as a horticulturist for a rare plants business, and so on. I like to move around.

And I am that friend who skips through the first measures of 60 songs looking for something interesting. I usually find listening to entire pieces of music excruciatingly boring.

Sure, I understand that there's more content to be found by digging down into the piece, but I find I get much more content by just moving on and listening to something new. Yes, 10 minutes of Bach is great, but I feel like I get more out of splitting my time between 2 minutes of Bach, 2 minutes of Hip-Hop, 2 minutes of Chinese Classical, 2 minutes of African Blues, and 2 minutes of Progressive Noise music.

In college I was in a program that let you build your own major. I was taking coursework in 5 majors in three years. It was too repetitive for me, so I dropped out so I could study many more things in as little time.

So, absolutely, I'm the sort of person who likes novelty. I'd like to understand where you guys are coming from with the re-reading/re-watching thing.

It's always been a great mystery to me, but maybe its something bigger than just media, maybe it's ADD!

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