Have you ever read a book, reached the end, then turned back to page one and started reading it again?

Instead of going on to your next book, you instinctively know you've got to read the same book again. If this has ever happened to you, did you really continue and read the same book all the way to the end, so that the same book was really the next book you read?

Please don't include short things, such as "The Cat in the Hat." I know children are happy to reread the same book, and I think they show the way to the instinct to reread, but I'm not interested in hearing about an adult choosing to reread something short. It just doesn't mean enough, because it's so easy. It's like hitting replay after a pop song you like. I've played "Crimson and Clover" over and over.

I mean a substantial book. I've often turned back to page one and started to read it over again, and maybe I've gotten half way through something (something long), but I've ended up moving on to something else. Until this last book. I've really got to reread the whole thing, and it's 500 pages long. And the reason I have to read it is that I can't understand it without reading it (and the author, in fact, says you have to reread it — he has to reread it — to understand it).

This is a book that presents many mysteries along the way, and you might take them in and carry them along feeling it will come together in the end. That's the conventional approach to mysteries: They're solved in the end. But that's not how this works. There are so many mysteries, and you can see something of how they ought to pull together, but by the end, you can't remember all the details exactly enough to do all that you want to do. Even reading it a second time, I write down words that I think will be useful in a search of the whole text.

For example, yesterday I wrote down "shadow," and today, searching, I see 48 appearances of the word "shadow," and reading these passages with "shadow," I get so many ideas about the meaning of the book that I would be happy to go on to a third reading. Now, I have such an overflow of ideas about the meaning of the book that I feel that I'd need to write 500 pages of my own to really understand.