(READ) IT AGAIN, SAM

This morning, I stumbled across this Newsweek column about the joys of rereading, where author David Gates explains why he keeps going back to certain books over the years. By happy chance, I’ve just finished my annual re-reading of one of my all-time favorites, These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer (I had to buy a new copy, I think my third, because mine is beginning to fall apart, despite my best efforts at preservation). I first read it when I was 11 years old, and it’s a big part of the reason I fell in love with the romance genre. Every time I read it I discover something new about it.

I know I’m not alone in this habit. Everybody has a “comfort read,” a book to pick up when you just want to return to something familiar. It could be a certain mystery or thriller; it could be the books set in the Middle-Earth that J.R.R. Tolkien created for Frodo and company; it could be Bruce Catton’s nonfiction books on the Civil War.

I think the rereading habit starts early in life. I remember as a kid reading, over and over, the Winnie-the-Pooh books by A.A. Milne (the pre-Disney ones, with drawings by Ernest Shepard). Ask any parent how many times he or she has read Goodnight, Moon or Green Eggs and Ham to a child. Adolescent and young-adult readers find and hang on to their favorites, too – books like Bridge to Terabithia or Holes. So it’s only natural that we carry this habit with us into adulthood.

Off the top of my head, I can think of at least a dozen books I’ve returned to over the years, everything from These Old Shades to A Time to Kill by John Grisham and Sharpe’s Waterloo by Bernard Cornwell. Someday I’ll work up the energy to go back and reread all the Patrick O’Brian novels and Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles.

What about you? What books do you find yourself rereading?

--Nora