As noted in several posts over the years I collect them.

Eccentrics. One sandwich short of a picnic. A screw loose. History is littered with sometimes charming enthusiasts who go a bit over the top, following a line of reasoning beyond the pale, shocking, outraging or just titillating more sober and cautious types. Sometimes they are vindicated as knowledge increases over time and their musings are shown to have been prescient.

That's overstatement since it's more a matter of fresh perspectives that attract me. Those who ask interesting questions or provide unexpected answers to stale questions enlarge the thought space and make it more possible to advance an inquiry.

The book the author reads is not the same as the one other people read.

At the beginning of the novel, two strangers find themselves crossing a high mountain pass together. In the course of their conversation, one of them mentions a lady who is an important leader in her organization, the other mentions his sister. What he knows and she doesn't is that they are the same person. The reader only discovers that much later in the book, so unless he rereads it that particular element of the conversation is never going to reach him. The author, on the other hand, does know it, and can be at least mildly amused by the light it casts on the interaction between the two.

One of my measures of the value of a book or other story (a movie for instance) is whether it continues to entertain with repeated reading or viewing. It often happens that the second encounter with a story is as satisfying as the first, or more so. It isn't only or primarily that certain scenes continue to move me on review as they did on first encounter, it is that familiarity reveals previously overlooked value.

The same is true for me on a more modest scale with the dashed off comments and essays in web log posts, and one of my goals in my own posts is to lace them with such "time release" nourishment. However, I suspect that I may be the only one who enjoys such veiled jokes, allusions and layered meanings. I'm amusing myself.