When You Realize You've Missed Something

Do you ever get partway through a book and realize that you seem to have missed a crucial detail or set of details from the beginning of the story? If yes, do you:

    A. continue reading anyway and assume that you will catch on to what you’ve missed?

    B. skim through the earlier pages of the book and hope to find whatever detail(s) you had missed?

    C. completely start the book over again from the beginning?

I’ve found that I most frequently go with option A, because I figure that if the book is good I will end up enjoying it even if I’ve missed some details about the plot. Spoiler alert: I read Infinite Jest, completely misunderstood a good portion of the plot, and actually thought that a character had died when he really didn’t. I still loved the book, and I give myself a pass for that one considering what Infinite Jest is.

Any time that I have tried option B I’m pretty sure I have failed to find the exact detail that I needed and ended up going back to option A.

I think last night I tried option C for the first time ever, or at least that I can recall.

I’m reading Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde which is way shorter than I would have expected. I only got about twelve pages in when I realized that the plot was already getting very intense, and yet I couldn’t really remember how I’d gotten there. At first I plowed ahead with option A. After a page or two I mildly considered option B, but looked at the tiny number of pages I’d gotten through and just said, Oh Heck, and went back to the beginning… and I’m glad I did! I missed a lot of key points about some of the characters and the plot that make my current spot in the book way more interesting.

Have you ever gotten partway through a book and then started over again?