When I love a novel I've read, I want to reread it - in part, to see how it was constructed.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I often reread books I have written.
I do reread, kind of obsessively, partly for the surprise of how the same book reads at a different point in life, and partly to have the sense of returning to an old friend.
I don't often reread my own books, unless I am going into another in the series and need to refresh my mood when originating the concept.
Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing.
I like looking at a book and asking myself, 'How do I replicate that experience I just had as a reader?'
Rereading, we find a new book.
I'm not interested in creating a book that is read once and then placed on the shelf and forgotten.
I have a bad tendency to get rapidly bored with my own material, so rewriting is hard for me. I mean, I already know the story and would rather read something new.
The things I keep going back to, rereading, maybe they say more about me as a reader than about the books. Love in the Time of Cholera, Pale Fire.
My advice to anyone adapting a novel is that once they've read it and learnt to understand it, then they must throw it away and never look at it again!