Do You Chronically Re-Read?

I don't think I realized I was a "Chronic Re-Reader" until very recently.

I mean, I know people have "comfort reads," books they continuously go back to, especially when they're feeling stressed or overwhelmed. For a while, I thought I fell in that category, too. I was a comfort re-reader. It came with being a mood reader.

But then I happened to look back over my GR lists, adding a re-read, looking at last year's challenge to see kind of what's going on.

Okay, fine. There was no "happened to look." I have really been struggling to get through a lot of books lately. Where I would normally read 5-6 books a week, now I'm getting maybe 12-13 a month it seems like. The new releases that I was so excited about just a few weeks ago, the new books I'd gotten in my monthly subscriptions... all of them are sitting on shelves. One is still wrapped. 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

So yeah. I looked at last year and realized something that I've "known" but never put together.

I'm a chronic re-reader.

I love to re-read. I love certain characters so much that I can't stand the thought of their story being over, that my time with them is done. I can't handle that, like-- at all! So I just don't!

My chronic reading is two-fold.

First there's the typical "mood reading" aspect. Whenever I feel the need to rejoin my favorites stories, I will gladly pick them up. I have compiled a small list of my go-to's.

• Kandi Steiner's Hail Mary

• Jennifer Sucevic's Campus God, Hate You Always, Campus Legend

• Rebecca Jenshak's Tutoring the Player, The Assist, The Fadeaway, The Tip-Off, and The Fake

• Jaqueline Snow's The Puck Drop, From the Top, The Summer Playbook, The Holdout,

• Elle Kennedy's The Deal, The Mistake, The Chase

• Sarina Bowen's The Year We Fell, The Boyfriend,

• Kelsie Stelting's Curvy Girls Can't Date Quarterbacks

• J. Wilder's Rule Number Five

• Alessa Thorn's Asterion (first, the entire Court of the Underworld but 100% will read this even if I don't re-read the series)

• Emma Slate's Wreck & Ruin

• Kate Jacob's Friday Night Knitting Club

• Kathryn Stockett's The Help

• Isabel Wolff's A Vintage Affair

• Erin McKean's Secret Lives of Dresses

• Davina Stone's The Alice Equation

• Josephine Angelini's Firewalker trilogy

• Michelle Moran's Cleaopatra's Daughter

• J. Wolf's Real Like Daydreams

• Karla Sorensen's Forbidden

• Keira Cass's The Selection Series

Is this a long-ish list? Yes. Are there more books I love? Yes. Even more by these authors in particular. But when it comes time to randomly pick a book to start--if I don't already have one picked-- I'm grabbing one of these.

Then there's the second part of my chronic re-reading. The part that I would often say, but it never clicked that this was truly a thing that I did.

I have books I must re-read at certain times of the year!

I like to start every year with my Mel Robbins series. I start with The 5 Second Rule, move to KickAss (her Audible exclusive), and then High 5 Habit.

Every Summer I will do a re-read of my ultimate comforts. That's when I'm for sure reading Secret Lives of Dresses, Vintage Affair, & The Help. I'll also throw in some childhood favorites like Where the Red Fern Grows, Nicholas Sparks books or Jude Deveraux's Black Lyon/Velvet series.

Every fall I like to read my "Fall of Egypt/Rome" series.

• Michelle Moran's Nefertiti

• Moran's Heretic Queen

• Angela Hunt's Egypt's Sister

• Moran's Cleopatra's Daughter

• Stephanie Dray's Lily of the Nile

Every Winter I like to read my thick AF fantasy books.

Welp, writing this out the way I have, I'm realizing why it can be so hard for me to pick up a new-to-me book! I just want to spend the whole year reading books I already love! There's definitely got to be more balance, but mentally I just am so bogged down with a never ending list of Have To's that reading books I know I love feels a lot safer.

• Notice when the urge to re-read really hits? The new year when everyone is talking "New Year, New Me."

• The Summer when school is winding down and they have legit something planned for every day. When the kids are suddenly home non-stop and insisting on being entertained. Or we go to the pool where I need to have an eye on them 100% of the time, but they don't want to hang with me so I have to have something to occupy my time, but not something brand new and so exciting I forget to be constantly vigilant. (It's a thing, trust me!)

• The Fall, when we're heading back to school and our routines are upended, again.

• The Winter holidays when time isn't real and everyone has demands on your time.

Look, I can't promise to ever get better about forcing myself to pick up new books. I logically know I'll find new books to love. I know that authors are always coming up with new works, better works... there's a good chance that my comfort reads aren't that author's first ever book, so clearly they're working their rears off coming up with new stuff. But... they have so many great ones out already! (The flip side of this issue is that I will tend to drop my books I have to read a beloved author's newest works. It's the only caveat to this.)

If you pick up one of my comfort reads, let me know what you think! I love hearing people have found a new-to-them author or series.