My family had the same rule about buying books, growing up - in fact, it was more like, 'get it from a library, and when you've read it multiple times that justifies buying it / others in the series'.
I now own a lot of physical books I haven't read, for the same reason as you- lack of English library access. I can get the academic books I want, but the fiction selections in university libraries are rarely to my taste.
Having said that, I do re-read a lot less now than I did as a child. Sadly, adult life and academia chew up too much brain and too much reading time. I own a handful of Pratchetts (mostly i read from my father's collection as a kid), but don't re-read them nearly as often as I thought i would.
Anne of Green Gables and sequels come around semi-regularly, though. Little Women every few years. I'm trying to gear myself up for another Lord of the Rings re-read - I used to do the Hobbit, LOTR and Sil every year in my teens, but have only read them piecemeal since and only the hobbit in the last five years.
I do find that I end up buying e-book copies of things I liked as a teen that I *didn't* expect to be re-reading still - Looking for Alibrandi, a popular Australian YA novel from before YA was a category, was one surprise. And books I've read as an adult, well, I re-read them less often than I did beloved books of my teens, but I do find I get a lot out of the re-read: second time around Portrait of a Lady was very much worthwhile. AS Byatt's Possession likewise. On the to-re-read list is Middlemarch.
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ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2020-05-04 07:37 pm (UTC)I now own a lot of physical books I haven't read, for the same reason as you- lack of English library access. I can get the academic books I want, but the fiction selections in university libraries are rarely to my taste.
Having said that, I do re-read a lot less now than I did as a child. Sadly, adult life and academia chew up too much brain and too much reading time. I own a handful of Pratchetts (mostly i read from my father's collection as a kid), but don't re-read them nearly as often as I thought i would.
Anne of Green Gables and sequels come around semi-regularly, though. Little Women every few years. I'm trying to gear myself up for another Lord of the Rings re-read - I used to do the Hobbit, LOTR and Sil every year in my teens, but have only read them piecemeal since and only the hobbit in the last five years.
I do find that I end up buying e-book copies of things I liked as a teen that I *didn't* expect to be re-reading still - Looking for Alibrandi, a popular Australian YA novel from before YA was a category, was one surprise. And books I've read as an adult, well, I re-read them less often than I did beloved books of my teens, but I do find I get a lot out of the re-read: second time around Portrait of a Lady was very much worthwhile. AS Byatt's Possession likewise. On the to-re-read list is Middlemarch.