RTW: On Re-Reading & The Best Book of March

From YA Highway:

Road Trip Wednesday is a ‘Blog Carnival,’ where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic.

This Week's Topic: What was the best book you read in March?

I didn’t read as many books as I would have liked in March (although I’m sure my husband would disagree) and I ended up re-reading books.  Here are the best of the best:

ANNA AND THE FRENCH KISS – I seriously cannot stop talking about this book.  Read about my luuurve affair with it here.

LOLA AND THE BOY NEXT DOOR – Once I read ANNA, I had to go back to LOLA to catch a few more glimpses of Etienne St. Clair.  Heart.

As much as I adored ANNA (and read it twice in two days), the best book of March was THE HUNGER GAMES.  I re-read it before seeing the movie and am now re-reading CATCHING FIRE.

I first read the THE HUNGER GAMES trilogy about a year ago, thanks to the suggestion of my excellent friend Sara, who is an enthusiastic YA reader (and CLOUD 9’s biggest fan).   I wanted the whole world to read THE HUNGER GAMES (except my son, who quite often asks when he can read it.  He’s not quite 9.  He’s going to have to wait a couple more years, I think).

In May of last year, I selected THE HUNGER GAMES for my book club to read.  At that time, I wrote this fantastic blog post about how much I love my book club friends and how grateful I am for them and what an amazing, thought-provoking discussion we had on the book.  I wrote the post on a Wednesday and that afternoon Blogger had a major malfunction and the blog post disappeared forever.  I still love my book club friends, by the way.

So now I’ve been rather impatiently waiting for THE HUNGER GAMES movie and Happy Birthday to me, I’ve finally seen it.  I had to wait until Monday the 26th, but it was so worth the wait.  I’m glad that I re-read the book before I saw it – I’m sure I would have missed little details (like why didn’t Haymitch fall off the stage at the Reaping?).  Of course I saw the movie with Sara and she had some valid comments, too, for those that will see the movie without reading the books, mainly – is Katniss faking her feelings for Peeta or not?!

I can't wait to take Hammer Guy to see the movie, so I'm basically forcing him to read the books.  He prefers reading hardcovers, so I bought it for him last night.  His comment: "You really want me to read this book, don't you?"

Well, duh.  We have a rule in our house -- you can't see the movie until you've read the book.

I have another excellent friend, Lena, who is reading the books for the first time.  When I mentioned that I’d just re-read the first and was moving on to the second, she commented, "Sara, I just don't get rereading books. You know what's going to happen!" (Umm, not always.  Sometimes I've forgotten.)

That’s got me thinking of all the many reasons to re-read a book. Here are just a few:

• To live the moments and emotions over again
• To return to a specific time in your life
• To savor the language, the turn of a sentence
• To fuel an obsession (uh, St. Clair, anyone?  Doug from Jennifer Echols' FORGET YOU? Even Rhett Butler.)
• To once again lose yourself in a compelling and intriguing story
• To discover things you didn't the first time around
• To learn -- lessons in craft (v. important for us writers)

Not everyone feels this way and that's okay, too.

So what about you?  Do you re-read?  What are some of your favorites?  And what was YOUR best book of March?

Love the soundtrack