in defense of the re-read

re: building a capsule library

I’ve been working on and thinking about this for a while now, and it was meant to go up a few days ago, but I caught a bit of a bug and honestly, anything having to do with reading makes more sense on a Sunday to me, anyway.

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The vast majority of my books have tragically been in storage for the last few months, somewhere in Long Island (I think) where I hope they're having a nice, restful time. That'll make one of us.

In the meantime, I have been attempting not to accumulate as many books as I did over the last decade or so. Not because I don't still love buying books—wandering a bookstore is, if I may, one of my favorite things in the world—but because I am bopping around for a bit and the logistics of ferrying dozens upon dozens of books from place to place every few months stresses me out. Deeply.

(I understand that for some, maybe many, of you, the clear answer to my predicament is an e-reader, and the urge to comment "get a kindle!" will be hard to resist. Folks, I appreciate that, but they are not for me. I require a tactile experience while reading, and a pencil in my hand. I'm afraid that scribbling semi-coherent marginalia is an integral part of my process.)

This is actually an eerily accurate representation of how closely I have to read whenever I find myself sans glasses. (Reading by Lamplight by James McNeill Whistler, courtesy of the Met’s Open Access program)

So I have come to appreciate, first, the shorter novel. The kind that doesn't just fit in my bag, but my jacket pocket. (It is a large pocket, to be fair, a nice sturdy rectangle that happily welcomes a thin tome and hand sanitizer.) It helps, of course, that Europeans have not yet met a 130-page book they do not immediately want to publish and prominently display in every bookshop. Here, brevity is alive and well.

I have also embraced the re-read, which is what today is about. Re-embraced, I should say. When I was little, my family moved from Uruguay to Italy for what turned out to be a little less than a year. There wasn't much room in our suitcases, what with the bedding and the winter clothes, for more than a few books. I can’t remember if I had much input in the process, but the ones that made the journey with us were volumes 1-4 of the wizard series of which we no longer speak but with which I was admittedly obsessed as a child. (At the time, the last three in the series had not yet been published.)

We went to the public library a few times, and I think I had some books from school, but for the most part, these four books were all I had to read at home. And by the time we left Italy, I had read those books front to back a staggering amount of times. For a while there, I'm pretty sure I knew more about these characters and their stories than that Scottish woman did.

I have since moved on to slightly more demanding literature, written by less horrific individuals. I have gone through reading slumps and I have read, at times, furiously, retaining little more than a title and a main character, if I was lucky.

And yet the times I have felt most connected to my reading habit are those when, like I did as an eight-year-old, I’ve rotated between a modest number of books, not waiting years but mere weeks before returning to them. References for each other, one and all.

I think it’s because when I have fewer books in my collection and am forced to return to pages I’ve already turned many times over, the more thoughtful a reader I’m allowed to become.

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I am not well-versed in monkish lifestyles, but the idea of reading and re-reading a small and limited universe of books for a period of time holds a certain ascetic appeal. Instead of being ready with a 20-book-deep TBR stack at the end of a novel, going back to one I read two or three months ago. Making of my personal library a little syllabus and becoming the world's foremost expert in the books in my possession by revisiting them over and over again.

You could literally become a saint by re-reading, is what I’m saying. (A Saint Reading by Bartolomeo Vivarini, courtesy of the Met’s Open Access program)

Isn't it worth the time spent, deepening your understanding of whatever holds meaning for you? I think it has to be. I think we both deserve it and owe it to ourselves.

Am I making reading sound less like entertainment and more like a chore? I don't mean to, although I do think in our hurry to fill up our bookshelves we've lost sight of what I hope we can all agree is at least one of literature's goals: self-edification. Reading is one of the most accessible means of learning, but what are we absorbing if we're moving from new book to new book with nary a glance at the rearview mirror? I'm worried!¹

Learning is one of life's greatest pleasures, and I think sometimes we are scared—or worse, embarrassed—to admit an interest in something we didn't study in school or gain expertise in through official channels, whatever those are. A lot of us have come to associate learning with childishness, believing that as adults we are only expected to either work or be entertained. Given the times we are living through, it is an assumption ripe for rejection.

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The more I think about it, the more I find it odd to buy a book, read it once, enjoy it, shelve it, and proceed to never crack it open again. Like wearing a nice new sweater once before sticking it in the back of your closet.

And I know, of course, that it is not a novel concept, the re-read. Children, especially, re-read the same books time and time again. But as adults it's become fashionable, I think, to devour books, and never really think about them again until Hulu or Reese Witherspoon (with those two, it’s often an “and” situation) inevitably picks up the rights to the series adaptation.

The experience of reading a book becomes a cycle of temporary takeovers of your brain, a running list of new characters and stories and styles we promptly forget as soon as we turn the last page.

I think we're holding ourselves back.

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Part of it is the competition between what I see as two separate motivations that only sometimes meet: reading for the sake of good story-telling and reading for the sake of calling yourself a reader. The latter, especially in the age of book influencing and Goodreads challenges, seems to operate under the assumption that the more books under your belt, the better qualified you are for the title of Reader. This, in my opinion, interferes with the former.

At least on social media, and judging by the sheer number of book clubs popping up every day, I get the feeling that more people are reading fiction, and in a vacuum I find that a positive development, sure, but: what are people getting out of being readers? Is it just escapism and short-term entertainment?

Steph

wrote a little bit about this a few weeks ago:

But listing criticisms is not reading critically. It isn’t engaging with a text at all, really, and doesn’t invite further thought from within or further conversation with others. Sometimes I can trick myself into thinking that having a sharp eye makes me a good reader. I’m reminded I’m wrong when I try to speak or write about a book I love. I struggle to find meaningful words in praise of books, and I end up leaning on trite descriptors that are as generic as those of book blurbs.

The thing is, I think it's difficult to identify why you felt a certain why about a book (especially if you enjoyed it—much easier, in my experience, to express in sordid detail the reasons why I hated a book) if you spend the least possible amount of time with it, just enough to get you from the title page to the acknowledgments.

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There's something else that attracts me to the re-reading project, and it's that I like what I like. I've noticed (in others and occasionally, in myself) a certain cheap thrill that comes from reading (and then writing about) something you don't enjoy, something you don't find good. At some point, pursuit of the mediocre/bad, and one's rush to explain to others why it was mediocre/bad, becomes its own reward. I don't like indulging that part of myself. If I read something I don’t enjoy, I want it to be an accident.

I'm not interested in reading so I can pan a book or an author, I guess is what I'm saying. Criticism is important and vital, and being able to understand and verbalize why I did or didn't enjoy a novel is a substantial part of my process, but I never want to begin a book thinking ooh I wonder what'll be wrong with this one. If I did, I don't think I would read much at all.

When I'm re-reading, I fully release myself from that temptation. Because by then, I'm hopefully only engaging with books that I enjoy and, more importantly, that insist on giving back to me. That I keep learning from.

Maybe you disagree. Maybe you believe that pages should be flipped just the once before moving on to the next book. That a first impression is all a novel demands and deserves. Or, an argument I personally find more persuasive: that there are so many books out there, new and old, that you can't justify the time spent on a re-read. But I already know I won't get to every book. The task is physically impossible. So I'd rather, with the time that I have, become well-versed in the books that I do like. Because I know they have more to give.²

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1. (Me to me: do not say anti-intellectualism, do not say anti-intellectualism, do not say anti-intellectualism.)

2. And if you find yourself constantly reading books that you don’t think are worth re-reading … I don’t know what to tell you! You can always re-examine your choices.