I May Go Home Again Song
A Moveable Feast
The Restored Edition
Returning to a book you've read multiple times tin can experience like drinks with an old friend. At that place'southward a welcome familiarity — just too sometimes a slight suspicion that time has changed you lot both, and thus the human relationship. But books don't change, people do. And that's what makes the human action of rereading so rich and transformative.
If you've been an avid reader for whatever amount of time, chances are yous've revisited a volume y'all dearest. A novel with interesting characters, that story drove that reminds yous of home, a book of poems you were given as a child. Whether it'due south nostalgia or simple pleasure we seek varies from person to person. Merely one thing is for certain: Every book is a reason in and of itself.
The number of books I receive every month tin exist glorious and daunting. It might be five, but it could be xx. And they all look damn beautiful, what with their unique designs, gripping blurbs, and freshly stale ink. Stories chock-full of murder, secrets, and political intrigue, novellas that seem to bear the weight of the world. Sure, I want to read them all, but that'southward impossible. I have children and a wife and dinner and I've been putting off getting an oil modify for far as well long. But also considering, see, in add-on to selected new releases, I really want to have that drink with the former friend.
Holy the Firm
There are 3 books I reread annually. These are the shoo-ins, books that I specifically set time aside for during the yr. The first, which I breeze through every spring, is Ernest Hemingway'due south A Moveable Feast. Published posthumously in 1964, it's his classic memoir of 1920s Paris. The language is well-nigh intoxicating, an aging author recalling an ambitious nonetheless simpler time.
Some other is Annie Dillard'due south Holy the Firm, her poetic 1975 ramble virtually everything and aught; a moth consumed in a flame, a baptism, a little daughter burned in an airplane accident. It begins: "Every day is a god, each mean solar day is a god, and holiness holds along in fourth dimension. I worship each god, I praise each day splintered downwards and wrapped in time like a husk, a husk of many colors spreading, at dawn fast over the mountains split." I wouldn't say in that location's a "plot," per se, merely perhaps it's the disfigurement of 7-twelvemonth-sometime Julie Norwich in that accident. Anyway, if you demand a neatly fleshed out plot to enjoy a volume there's a pretty good chance y'all're a sociopath.
The third volume is Julio Cortázar'south Save Twilight: Selected Poems, because verse. And considering Cortázar.
While I tend to purchase a lot of books, these three were given to me as gifts, which might subconsciously add to the meaning I adhere to them. But I imagine that, while money is indeed wonderful and necessary, rereading an writer'due south piece of work is the highest currency a reader can pay them. Specially if the author is no longer around to spend coin.
Relieve Twilight
Selected Poems
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A voracious reader is a non-stop consumer of worlds. Simply one'due south interpretation of these worlds morphs and shifts depending on the personal experiences one brings into the reading. We place with a graphic symbol's pain because nosotros've felt pain, and then on. The beauty of rereading lies in the thought that our date with the piece of work is based on our current mental, emotional, and even spiritual register. It's true, the older I become, the more I feel time has wings. But with reading, it'due south all about the present. It's most the now and what ane contributes to the now, considering reading is a give and have between author and reader. Each has to pull their own weight. There are books I hated in my early 20s that I now encounter every bit powerful and revelatory.
The best books are the ones that open further as fourth dimension passes. Simply remember, it's non because they changed. Every letter and punctuation marking is exactly where information technology ever has been, and where it will remain forever. It's you who are different; it'southward you who'south been afflicted past the depth of your experience. And it's you that has to grow and read and reread in order to better understand your friends.
Juan Vidal is a writer and critic for NPR Books. He's on Twitter: @itsjuanlove
Source: https://www.npr.org/2016/04/17/474404440/you-can-go-home-again-the-transformative-joy-of-rereading
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