Re-reading is much underrated. I've read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold once every five years since I was 15. I only started to understand it the third time.
That's from Malcolm Gladwell.
True sentences
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It’s amazing how much satisfaction–and learning–there is in re-reading something. For me, re-reading The Lord of the Rings always brings some new insight. And the amount of purely escapist literature I re-read is probably what has kept we away from contemporary fiction. (Pace Gladwell. It probably took me five readings of The Ipcress File to understand it…different Brit spy fiction, but a not-too-dis-similar experience.)
If only the same could be said for Seinfeld reruns, I would be a much richer man
I reread, though few people I know do. I reserve calling a book one of my favorites until I’ve read it several times.
Based on experience, this is one benefit of having a forgetful memory.
I’ve re-read Don Quixote four times (Edith Grossman’s translation), and am looking forward to a fifth. Its not just the story, but the quality of good writing that brings much joy.
Perhaps we could do with an index of the most re-read to reveal the best quality of writing.
“History suggests that there is almost exactly a 50% chance that any piece of information a spy gives you is true. We would be as well off getting rid of the secret service and flipping coins.”
I’m not sure this is true. If we have a lot of detailed info and know that 50% is likely to be true, might we be better off than knowing nothing? Wouldn’t Monte Carlo simulation tell us something? I would think it would depend on the level of detai– sorry– granularity.
“History suggests that there is almost exactly a 50% chance that any piece of information a spy gives you is true. We would be as well off getting rid of the secret service and flipping coins.”
That’s incredibly vapid even for Gladwell. Can he get any worse?
Poetic license aside, can you really say “much underrated”?
Rereading Gladwell results in no marginal gain.
I still measure time in “How Many ‘Gilligan Islands’ it takes to accomplish a task.
Thanks, Cap’n.
Well, the question becomes if two different spies give you information, what is the probability that both are false?
Warren Buffett says that the nice thing about knowing everything is that people won’t try to lie to you because you will catch them. So you get a positive feedback cycle, if you have the humility to work your ass off collecting information.
The problem is that the people running our government ARE flipping coins. Yellow cake. Curve ball. Aluminum tubes. knitting needles. On and on. Ignorance and hubris is not a good mix.
I guess when you’re a celebrity author/journalist you can get away with listing pithy statements like this and calling it a day. I clicked on the orignal article because I was intrigued by the claim about re-reading and was looking forward to Gladwell’s exploration of re-reading. I always feel strongly the opportunity cost of re-reading and try to limit it to only particularly useful or important works. Perhaps Gladwell will give us the LP version of his thoughts at some point in the future.
Amen, brother! People always seem confused by the very concept of rereading a book. I always ask them if they have never rewatched a movie.
I used to reread Atlas Shrugged once a year starting in 8th grade to reindoctrinate myself. It had the opposite effect and I came to realize that, while she had a few good ideas, Ayn Rand was a complete nutter and that modeling my life on objectivist principles would be a BAD IDEA.
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