It's been quite a while since I have written on this topic. I have always been a re-reader. Most people I personally know are not. Most people I read about and the authors that I read are. I try very hard to explain to people why I enjoy re-reading a good book. By the way, this also fortifies my argument for keeping books after I read them. But I know I go overboard.
Yesterday I found something in a book I haven't read yet that best explains the habit of re-reading I've seen to this point. It is in a book by Michael Dirda.
He writes in his preface on page x, "Who, at any age, can read unmoved the last pages
of Tarzan of the Apes when the rightful Lord Greystoke, deliberating sacrificing his
own hope for happiness, quietly says, ' My mother was an ape...I never knew who my
father was.' In our hearts, we measure all the "better" and "greater" books of adult-
hood against such touchstones - and in later years we often return to the originals for
comfort and renewal."
Comfort and renewal. I guess that's how I feel when I go a book I've read before and pick it up to begin again the story has to tell. One of my very favorites is actually non-fiction but is a series of essays about - what else but books. It's called, Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman. I have read it at least four times. Every time I enjoy it more. From combining her library with her husband's after only five years of marriage (to say nothing of six years before that of living together) to about what people write on flyleaves of books, the entire book is a treasure.
Now that I've pulled it down from the shelf, I just might read it again. At least about combining libraries.
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