The pleasures and dangers of rereading

From Rereadings: Seventeen writers revisit books they love:

When my son was eight, I read C.S. Lewis's The Horse and His Boy aloud to him. I had originally read it when I was eight myself, and although I'd reread the better-known Narnia books--The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; The Magician's Nephew; The Silver Chair--in the interim, more than 40 years had passed since I'd read The Horse and His Boy.

Reading a favorite book to your child is one of the most pleasurable forms of rereading, provided the child's enthusiasm is equal to yours and thus gratifyingly validates your literary taste, your parental competence, and your own former self. Henry loved The Horse and His Boy, the tale of two children and two talking horses who gallop across an obstacle-fraught desert in hopes of averting the downfall of an imperiled kingdom that lies to the north. It's the most suspenseful of the Narnia books, and Henry, who was at that poignant age when parents are still welcome at bedtime but can glimpse their banishment on the horizon, begged me each night not to turn out the light just yet; how about another page, and then, how about another paragraph, and then, come on, how about just one more sentence? There was only one problem with this idyllic picture. As I read the book to Henry, I was thinking to myself that C.S. Lewis, not to put too fine a point on it, was a racist and sexist pig.

-- Anne Fadiman, Forward

Rereading the C.S. Lewis Narnia books to my son was perhaps the most enjoyable rereading experience of my life. And, perhaps I'm just an insensitive dolt, but I never noticed racism or sexism either the first or second time around. But, and this confirms my general doltishness, until I read all seven books in a row, it never occurred to me how Christian the books were, particularly The Last Battle. I suppose this is understandable in a child (nominally) raised Jewish. But it's kind of ridiculous in an adult who had reread The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Magician's Nephew at least once before.

Another rereading confession: I can no longer read PG Wodehouse. Oh, if someone discovered an unpublished cache of Wodehouse, I'd be first in line. But so far as Bertie, Jeeves, Lord Emsworth and Mr. Mulliner are concerned, I've been to the well too many times. Quote Wodehouse and I'm in heaven. I can discuss favorite lines, chapters and books with the best of them, but somehow I can't recapture the joy I experienced the first dozen times I read them. At least I can look forward to senility.

How about you? Have you picked up a book that once knocked your socks off, only to find that it disappoints? And what book or books have you read that only get better with repetition?