[krishicks]

On re-reading books:

The first time I read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace I found myself unable to determine what was Important for much of the first few hundred pages. None of it made sense and I couldn't figure out what The Point of the book was. I kind of read the pages but didn't really take any of it in.

The second time I read it was a completely different experience: those first pages immediately made sense, and I derived a sense of pleasure in reading them that I didn't have the first time around.

[tw1010]

Tangentially, I've had a similar experience when teaching myself some areas of pure mathematics via books. The first time around I had a hard time figuring out which theorems were significant and worth more attention than others. The second time around the most important ones were a lot more obvious.