Rereading and Re-rereading

April 9, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What book could you read over and over again?
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I’ve spent the past couple of years rereading various mystery series from start to finish so I could get the full story of the character. Normally, I just picked books at random so sometimes a character is married, sometimes is just meeting the love of his/her life, sometimes is in full parental mode. All while being a cop or agent or private detective, of course.

After reading more than twenty thousand novels (plus thousands of non-fiction books), I’ve found a sameness to the stories, characters, situations, so that novels tended to overlap, which is why I didn’t think it would matter if I read these series again. Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy the books as much as I thought I would since (for me, anyway) most novels don’t have a lot of depth. What you see is what you get. I even went back and read books I’d read over and over when I was young, but the stories didn’t have the same pull for me now that they did back then. Of course, I’m not the same person now as I was back then, either.

Lately I’d been rereading the first eleven books of The Wheel of Time. (I have no interest in ever rereading the last three books by the makeshift author. Although readers seem to prefer them to the first eleven books, I find them to be overhyped drek.) There are so many layers to the books that Robert Jordan himself wrote, there are so many inspirations from and references to real life, so many interlocking characters to keep track of, that it’s taken me a long time to piece it all together. I’d think the difficulty of remembering in book ten what happened in book two would be a failing of my aged memory, but I do know one thing — I would not have had the patience for these books when I was younger, so any comparison is irrelevant. Nor would have read them then — I never liked that whole good vs. evil theme. It always seemed contrived. Besides, I know more of the world and its culture now than I did then, so the underpinnings of the story are more obvious to me, and those that aren’t are fun to discover.

I’m to the point, though, where I might have gleaned as much of the meaning and found as much of the puzzle as possible, so I might have to pack the books away, but for now, they still sit prominently on my book shelf while I read The Kingkiller Chronicle. Only the first two books of that Patrick Rothfuss trilogy have been published, but I’ll probably reread these books, too. Although there doesn’t seem to be much referencing to our myths and legends, there is a lot of inworld referencing that I’ll need to piece together someday.

I’ve been trying to find more rereadable books and series that I can sink my life into, but so far, no luck. The problem is, I’ve developed an aversion to going to our library (I’ve searched those shelves a thousand times and just can’t force myself to look even once more), so I will have to find rereadable books if I want to continue my lifelong habit of reading. There are a few other books on my shelf to go through, and there are the books I’ve written, of course, which are enjoyable to reread. (Though I have to confess, I’m a bit embarrassed by the reviews I posted here of those books. Talk about self-aggrandizement! So not my thing. Besides, every author feels the same way about their books, which makes those reviews even more cringeworthy.)

And after I’ve finished reading and rereading the books on my shelf? I don’t know. With any luck, I’ll find books to serve my reading needs.

On a completely different slant about these two series: I found a chapter-by-chapter outline by a reader showing where the final book of the The Kingkiller Chronicle might be going, which would be a good way to conclude the series if the author doesn’t ever manage to do it. I’d hoped to find something similar for The Wheel of Time, where the fans outlined what they hoped would happen, but I suppose having the finale written, no matter how badly, put the kibosh on any such online project. And anyway, I pretty much created my own ending, if only in my mind.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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Emergency Library

January 19, 2026 — Pat Bertram

When I was young, I often reread books, but in my middle years, I discovered I didn’t like rereading, didn’t like the echoes of previous readings reverberating in my head. Like most readers, I’d accumulated shelves of books, but when I realized I didn’t want to reread any, I gave them away. The only books I liked having on hand were those I hadn’t read, what I called my “emergency stash.”

When the quarantine hit, and the library was closed, I quickly used up my emergency stash, and ended up rereading The Wheel of Time series. I found I liked living in Jordan’s world, one that purported to be both our distant past and our even more distant future. Well, I liked the parts when they were traveling, not so much the parts when they were manipulating each other, torturing each other, bending each other to their will. When the reread seemed to work out, I started searching for other books or series I could keep on hand to reread. Although I tried, I was never able to get into any other fantasy series, could not relate to any of them. There were too many ridiculous unpronounceable names and even more ridiculous situations in never-were-could-never-be worlds, to say nothing of the often-execrable writing. I did enjoy Ender’s Game and some other of Orson Scott Card’s science fiction books, but none I wanted to re-reread.

Recently, I went through series I’d previously read, but this time, instead of picking up books haphazardly, I read them in the order they were written to get a better idea of the character’s story. Most were mysteries, most I’d read so long ago I didn’t remember the story, but none caught my imagination enough to want to ever reread again. Others were stories I once loved, such as the Mrs. Pollifax books, Dune, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but although I liked the first book in all three of those series, the rest didn’t hold up to my adult scrutiny.

I did order the Noel Barber novels — I couldn’t get Tanamera, Sakkara, and Farewell to France from the library and I thought a friend would like to read Tanamera since she’d grown up in the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia. I ordered the others because at one time I’d liked them, and as it turned out, I still do.

So that’s the extent of my emergency library — Robert Jordan and Noel Barber. It turns out that no matter how much I once liked a book, few of them have the depth or sink-into-ability that I need to enjoy rereading a familiar story. It’s just as well. I don’t like having a lot of clutter, and books I don’t want to reread seem clutterish to me. I do have a stack of books about alchemy that I inherited from my brother and haven’t yet read, but I’m saving them for . . . actually, I don’t know what I’m saving them for. A time when I have the mental effort to expend on them, perhaps, but at least they are there as an emergency stash for my emergency stash.

Come to think of it, I also have the books I’ve written, but I’m afraid to read them in case I’m no longer proud of them. But someday I might read them. Or not.

Are there any books you enjoy rereading? Any you love? Any you’ve read multiple times?

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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The Glad Game

August 28, 2020 — Pat Bertram

When I was a girl, I often got hand-me-downs from a much older and thinner cousin, which gave me a bad body image way too young and many years before it became a “thing.” My books, most of which had been published in the early part of the twentieth century, were also hand-me-downs from her. Looking back, some of the books themselves seemed old even then, so they might have been handed down to her first — odd to think I never thought to ask where the books originated.

I read as much then as I do now, so whenever I got sick and had finished reading all my library books as well as those of my siblings, I’d reread these novels. I had a few Nancy Drew, a lot of Judy Bolton, some miscellaneous stories, and a boxed set of five Pollyanna books that chronicled her life way past childhood. One year I was absent from school so often that I must have read these books three or four times. (I remember thinking I was pretending to be sick so I didn’t have to go to school, but once when I told my mother this, she said, “You really were sick.” But silly me, I never asked what my illness was.)

Way into my late teens, whenever I wasn’t feeling well, I’d reread these books. I don’t know what happened to the mysteries, but a friend wanted the Pollyanna books, and so I gave them to her. (She doesn’t remember this, but it was a long time ago, and I’m sure her receiving the books wasn’t as emotionally charged as my giving them.)

I was particularly enthralled with Pollyanna and her glad game, and I even tried playing it myself, but being the pragmatist and realist that I am, I couldn’t always see “gladness” even in the things she found to be glad about. The game began when her missionary parents received a “missionary barrel” of donated items, and the only thing for a little girl was a pair of crutches. Her father told her, and she believed, that she could be glad she didn’t need them.

To my way of thinking, she could have been just as glad not to need them if she had also received the doll she wanted, and the doll would have lasted a lot longer than the gladness for not needing the crutches. But then, of course, if it had worked out my way, there wouldn’t have been a story.

What made me think of all this is that my co-worker is a real-life Pollyanna, though her key words are not gladness but “this is a good thing because. . .” I’d seen her in action before, trying to keep our charge from descending into a funk, but her skill really struck home yesterday.

The client (for lack of a better word) and I had spent our time together grumping about the things going on in the world today. Being a grump has its place, I think. Facing the reality of widowhood and age certainly has its place. Mostly we just acknowledged the various situations we talked about, and then went on to something else without dwelling on the issues.

When our friend and coworker came home with her gladness, it struck me how very different two valid points of view can be. I’m ashamed to admit that I burst out with, “You’re a real Pollyanna!” Not only is it rude to make personal remarks like that, but the word “Pollyanna” is also sort of trite and meaningless nowadays, devoid of any literary context, especially since others have used the word to describe her. I tend to think it’s different for me, steeped as I have been in the whole Pollyanna literary mystique for so much of my life, not an offhand comment so much as a reflection of the hundreds of times I’d read the Pollyanna books. I could actually see my co-worker in that dauntless girl, changing the world around her with her attitude.

For a few minutes, I considered emulating her, but then I remembered my previously failed Pollyanna-isn-ness. And I remembered how much good I’ve done by dealing with certain realities — such as grief — in all their stark horror, bleakness, and pain by saying, “yes, this is hard, and it will always be hard.”

One thing that I can be glad about — because of this episode, I downloaded the first two Pollyanna books (the two written by the original author) as well as a couple of others she’d written with that same “life is beautiful” attitude.

And the author is right — life is beautiful.

Even when it’s not.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

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