Dear Susan,
Had this discussion with my eldest brother regarding rereading literature, he wondered at the point of it ( he is not a Pratchett fan ).
My argument, Pratchett is what I call a page turner, you want to know what happens next, when I read Pratchett I can't put it down, so I think I sometimes miss the deeper meaning or the subtle joke.
Also as I have found in life, something new may happen and when you reread you bring that something new to the book, you relate more to the story.
Of course my arguments feel on stony ground, he is an atheist ( a very cheerful atheist, like Pratchett ) strange thing is I have never caught him eating deep fried baby, well not yet!!
Anyway, any thoughts on why we reread favourite books, is it a sort of escapism.
Gonnagle.
Why do we re-read books?
I don't know about anyone else but I find that, and this may be a blatant statement of the obvious, I find that I have two reasons why I will re-read a book:
1 - because it is a book that I have read to obtain information and, on reading another book, I have gone back to check up on, or add to, what I took from it the first time;
or
2 - (and this especially applies to books by Sir Terry) I enjoyed them the first time and want to repeat the experience. It also, quite often, leads to me seeing things that I may have missed the first time or things that I see in a different light upon second, third or fourth, reading.
I have also just finished reading The Shepherd's Crown.
Interesting and absorbing.
The notes at the back on how Sir Terry wrote, disjointed scenes that would be expanded, modified, left for different book, that were then woven together into a finished article suggest to me that he was planning to enlarge upon the revelations, the new perspective, about Mrs Earwig, among others.
There were other very minor tidbits that I am sure would have been raised to major tidbits in future stories had Sir Terry survived to write them.
I am sorry that the notes at the end of the book also seem to scotch the idea, mooted when he really started to feel the effects of his Alzheimers, that his daughter would be carrying on the Discworld stories. I can, however, understand that she might have realised, in sorting out Shepherd's Crown for publication, that this was not a viable proposition in terms of maintaining the standard, Sir Terry did, after all have an almost unique world-view which made the Discworldstories what they were.
Tiffany, Nanny Ogg, Granny Weatherwax, C M O T Dibbler, Rincewind, Arch-Chancellors Weatherwax and Ridcully, Stibbons, Hex, Death, Susan Death, Moist von Lipwi and Adora Belle Lipwig (ne้ Dearheart) and so many, many others - you will be sorely missed and, along with Sir Terry, our world is a far poorer place for your passing and thus the loss of all those stories that will now never grace my bookshelves!
