Reviews

On Rereading by Patricia Meyer Spacks

karinlib's review against another edition

4.0

I heard someone talk about this book on booktube, and since I have been doing a lot of rereading in the last few years, I had to pick it up. Spacks is a retired literature professor. In order to write this book, she reread many books to gauge her response, did they live up to her original enjoyment, etc. I liked that she reread books that she didn't like originally to see if her older self liked them more. I had to laugh that couldn't get passed the first paragraph in the [b:The Da Vinci Code|968|The Da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2)|Dan Brown|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1579621267l/968._SY75_.jpg|2982101].

emilyharris16f23's review against another edition

3.0

I loved the thesis of this book, and I do love a professional saying rereading is good for you! I also really enjoyed the authors personal stories about encountering books for either the first time or her following rereads. What I think lowered my enjoyment/intererst was that I hadn't read many of the books referenced throughout. Since the author spends significant time doing literary analysis of the books she's reading, those sections felt tedious to me since she talked mostly about books I've never read, or sometimes never heard of.

cleverbaggins's review against another edition

1.0

This is the last of the literary theory type books I'm trying for now and its just as disappointing ( but at least not as insulting) as the last few. The writing is dry and boring and honestly it seems like she doesn't have anything new to say at all. She's somewhat dismissive of younger readers (like her students) and had no clue about some major titles.

Now, I don't believe that everyone has to have read or heard of anything but if you love books and want to write about books (and god forbid are teaching books) I expect you to be at least a little up to date on books.

So no, this book wasn't for me at all.