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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