Why Do We Keep Reading?

[Peg Herring]

A discussion on a mystery chat group recently dealt with why we keep reading authors who long ago ran out of things to say to us. Either their work has grown stale or we ourselves have read enough of it to know exactly what's coming, yet we keep buying them, reading them, waiting for them to do it again.

I suppose it's habit, in part. It's also a desire to recapture that feeling of joy you once had, like going to your high school reunion and expecting to meet the cool dudes and dudettes you once knew. It's also safe. You know that an author writes to your taste, so even if it's the same story with a different setting, you will enjoy it. And there's always the chance that something new will pop up.

In John Steinbeck's THE RED PONY, the grandfather tells the same stories over and over, irritating the little boy's dour father to the point that he tells him they've heard them many times before. The old man is hurt, and later he tells the boy that he doesn't know why he needs to repeat the stories. "I only know how I want people to feel when I tell them."

I think that's why we keep reading the same authors. Even if it's an old story, we know how we will feel when we hear it.

[B.R.Stateham]

Look at it this way; most people like familiarity. What they are comfortable with they enjoy. 'New' and 'unknown' are concepts most people shy away from.

[I. J. Parker]

Frequently the famous author's books are bad. People buy, read, and say they are bad and they'll never buy another one. But the next book will be snapped up anyway. It illustrates that people don't learn from their mistakes, and that their fear of an unknown author is greater that their fear of a known one.