What is the "Second-Read Experience?"
“The Second-Read Experience”
I was sitting on a dated, floral patterned couch in our living room.
A Sunday afternoon, the sun was shining in through the windows, it was quiet and pleasant, and a steaming cup of coffee sat beside me as I cracked the covers of a Hemingway novel for the very first time—A Farewell to Arms.
It was a birthday present from my wife, and I couldn’t wait to read something by the literary giant I had heard so much about.
So I opened those pages with great expectations, only to be met with a long disappointment.
Over the next few weeks, the hours and hours I poured into the book felt tedious, confusing, and at the end of it all, just plain unsatisfying.
For all of the time and effort, I hardly understood, or enjoyed, the book at all.
Have you ever felt like that?
Fast-forward a few years.
I was roaming about my college library, poking through the stacks, when I stumbled upon How to Read a Book, by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren.
Intrigued by the title, I pulled it down and flipped through the pages, scanning the contents, not expecting to be impressed.
However, something about it hooked me.
So I checked the book out, went home, and spent the next week pouring over its contents. The book offered a systematic approach to understanding and enjoying books of all kinds.
Many of the tips were helpful, but the real game changer was their advice on reading books more than once.
They spoke of how some books, the best books, are always worth reading more than once, and can’t even truly be enjoyed or understood with just one read.
Meaning if you want to get the full experience, the full benefits, you have to read them twice—at least.
Immediately I began applying their advice, reading The Iliad and The Odyssey, Paradise Lost, The Great Gatsby, Fahrenheit 451, and many, many others. Not just once, but twice.
What I found was, they were right!
Great books like these truly can’t be mined for all their worth in just one read.
Plus, most of the time, the first read isn’t even that great.
Usually, the first read is something you have to slog through, because nothing makes sense yet.
That’s been true for pretty much every book I've read that's over fifty years old. Which is all the classics!
BUT, in almost every case, the second read is gold. Why?
Because now you know where the story is going.
Now you can appreciate all the bread crumbs the author leaves for you.
Now you can connect the dots that seemed totally random during your first read.
Because, the better the book, the better the second-read experience will be.
Like when, years later, I finally went back to A Farewell to Arms.
Suddenly, the entire story made sense.
I understood the book’s meaning.
I appreciated what was great and unique about it, the pieces of the book that have led it to be considered the greatest novel to come out of WWI for over 90 years.
Because the second time through that book was gold.
The problem is reading every novel twice requires a lot of one thing—Time.
Not to mention the perseverance needed to slog through the first read just to get there.
In other words, reading is a great investment in ourselves. But there's a high cost to pay in order to get the most out of our reading, to get those second-read benefits.
After all, time is the only thing we can’t make more of…
From Argyle Street
That's why I'm starting From Argyle Street.
It helps people enjoy the second-read experience, the first time around. So you can get so much more out of your reading, without spending the time slogging through that first read.
The plan is to release one article each month breaking down one great novel.
· April's article is on “A Farewell to Arms” by Hemingway
· May's is last year's Pulitzer Prize winner
Then a few articles each month. Every article helps you to savor everything that novel has to offer.
So each month, you'll grow significantly in your understanding of one great work of fiction.
Which is something you can totally do on your own. But it takes the average person over 8 hours to read a single book.
This will save you that 8 hours—every time. And bring you the joy of understanding a great book. So you get all the enjoyment, without the slog.
If that’s something you value—your own time and enjoyment—then sign-up today, to start gaining that “Second-Read Experience” the first time around.
Until next time, enjoy you’re reading!
-Trevor Lovell
From Argyle Street
***a fun, bookish pic of myself and our oldest daughter, just a young’in at the time.