Can you bring yourself to playing a finished game more than once? Of course I don’t mean that I discard it after playing it one time, but if I’ve finished a game, I have gone back to the same game only once, and that was for Okamiden. I don’t count the sim games like Animal Crossing where you can go back to find the world has moved on without you, and you can jump right in. They are different of course. I find replaying a game to be a bit boring, the thrill of the new is gone.
Now in books it’s different for me. I’ve always read books from a young age, and I’ve collected quite a few of them. I prefer series where I can follow the same characters for a long time. These book-characters become friends of mine, I feel like I really know them in real life. And I have no problem to read the same series more than once, it feels like re-visiting old friends! Classics like The Lord of the Rings for instance. I’ve read them a couple of times in Dutch, and then decided that there was nothing like reading them in the original language, so I bought them in English and read them again. But other series too, like all series by David Eddings (The Belgarion series, the Elenium series) and the Amelia Peabody books written by Elizabeth Peters.
Amelia Peabody is in a league of her own as far as I’m concerned. It’s about a lady at the turn of the 19th century, who is convinced she will be an old spinster and is quite happy with the idea, having money of her own. But then she decides to visit Egypt and see the pyramids. She falls in love with Egypt, archeological work and most of all, she finds her match in archeologist Emerson. All of that happens in the first book, after that you follow the Emerson’s and their precocious son Ramses for the rest of their lives. See the turmoil in Egypt leading up to and during the first world war through their eyes, and help them discover archeological finds.
Why I like her so much? I like her spunk, I like the way she tries to boss everyone around and is able to make everyone see that her way is best. I find a lot of humerous passages in the books, and I like the love between family and their friends. The books are called murder mysteries, but to me that’s only a minor part of the books. To me, reading the books like I’m doing now for the umpteenth time, is like visiting old friends. Comfortable and having a very good time.