An Intro to Adventures in Rereading

Earlier this year I thought to myself that I'd like to devote a month, one solid month, to reading nothing but rereads. There are quite a few books and some series that I'd love to revisit. However, looking at the stack of books I have yet to read, a few of which are ARCs of books that come out during the summer months, I don't see where I could devote a whole month to rereads unless I was willing to wait until August or September maybe, and I don't want to do that. I also, I've realized, don't want to entirely block myself off from reading the new books I have.

This month I reread the entire Hunger Games series and while it emotionally exhausted me (I forgot just how brutal Mockingjay was -- don't be surprised if this inspires a few posts later on), it was also a really great experience and made me, once again, want to revisit other favorite stories and characters.

So now I have a new plan. Instead of devoting a solid month to rereading, I've decided to reread at least one book or series a month for the remainder of this year. I'm working on making a list of the books I want to reread and I've decided to blog my rereading adventures (my definition of the word "adventure" is maybe a little different than most people's?). I won't be doing reviews, but definitely some reflection on the different books and my relationship to them. I'd love it, of course, if anyone wants to join in the rereading journey with however many books you feel like rereading this year. Would anyone be interested in this? Maybe I can set up a linky or some such for fellow bloggers.

Second-Chance Authors

So a few years back, after Nathan Bransford blogged about how people don't really buy or read than many debut novels and come on we want to be writers so we should be buying them, I decided to ONLY BUY DEBUTS for a while. This led to me finding a few really great books, but also led to this book:

Bloom, by Elizabeth Scott. It looked so pretty and the summary was so good and I bought it. And I read it. And I didn't like it. Bloom was one of those books that just hit me the wrong way. The main character's decisions annoyed me, the secondary characters couldn't save it, and though I kept reading waiting for the ending to pay off, it never did.

So later, when I saw other Elizabeth Scott books in stores, I never picked them up. No, thank you, I thought. One was enough. I didn't read Perfect You, Stealing Heaven, or Something, Maybe.

And then I heard about this book.

 The Unwritten Rule. I wanted to read it before I knew who the author was just because it sounded like exactly the sort of book I was looking for. The title was amazing, the premise was intriguing, and I wanted to see how the subject was handled. When I (surprise!) got a review copy in the mail, I was ecstatic. To be completely honest I was a little wary of reading something by the same person who wrote Bloom, but mostly I was excited to read the book.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that I loved that book. Not only did I write a completely glowing review, but I also emailed the author -- which I rarely do -- to tell her how much I loved the book and to thank her for writing it. I'm so glad that I gave E. Scott's writing another try because The Unwritten Rule is seriously one of the best books I've read.

And the point of this is that even if you don't like one book by a writer you might like -- you might love -- another book they wrote. So I challenge you to give an author whose books you don't think you like a second chance. Read their book that sounds the best, or the one everyone else has been recommending to you, or, heck, maybe just the one with the best cover.