{"id":3630,"date":"2005-09-20T13:33:09","date_gmt":"2005-09-20T17:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3630"},"modified":"2024-10-27T21:51:54","modified_gmt":"2024-10-28T01:51:54","slug":"re-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3630","title":{"rendered":"Re-Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

So next Tuesday night, if I don’t have rehearsal, I will be at the New York Public Library for the following evening event<\/a> which sounds faaaaabulous:<\/p>\n

REREADINGS:<\/p>\n

Like romantic love, early book-love is ecstatic. As a young reader curls up with a novel, its fictional characters seem real, while the real world pales into comparative insignificance. Can that ecstasy be recaptured? Is a book–or a reader–the same the second time around? In an evening of conversation for bibliophiles, Anne Fadiman will explore the emotionally charged topic of rerereading along with David Samuels and David Michaelis, two of the authors who contributed to REREADINGS: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love<\/i>, a witty and poignant collection of essays that Fadiman selected and edited. Andr\u00e9\u00a0\u0081ciman will moderate.<\/p>\n

Moderator Andr\u00e9\u00a0\u0081ciman muses: “The books I read once changed me more than the books I read today. I reread old books not only to rediscover what was so special about them, but to recover the kind of starstruck reader I was then.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A couple things: Anne Fadiman is a personal idol of mine. Her book Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader<\/i><\/a>\"\" is a must-read for anyone who is even mildly obsessive about reading. It’s a collection of essays about reading, and growing up in a family that reads (to the degree that they compulsively copy-edit the menus at the local Chinese restaurant) – it is laugh out loud funny. How she really knew she was married not when she said the vows, not when they moved into the same apartment – oh no no – she really knew she was really married when she and her husband “merged libraries” … woah. Huge step. To throw out a duplicate copy of The Great Gatsby<\/i> … now THAT’S commitment to the future. She is a fantastic writer. She was also the editor of American Scholar<\/i>, one of my favorite magazines – I don’t think she’s there anymore though. She also edits my favorite yearly compilation series: Best Magazine Writing – I buy it every year.<\/p>\n

Look at her face! I just love her. She’s young, witty, hilarious and just – damn. The woman can write<\/i>. Her style is David Sedaris-esque – but really, it’s a style all her own.<\/p>\n

I admire her so much.<\/p>\n

Anyway, it got me to thinking about re-reading. Over the past couple of years, I have gone back and “re-read” all the books I was FORCED to read in high school. Which has been great fun (and sometimes just as tortuous as the original experience).<\/p>\n

But the “re-reading” that will be discussed at this panel thing next week is not that kind of re-reading – it’s when the charm of a certain book does not pall with the years. What are the books that you can re-visit – again and again and again, without any of the magic or power or whatever it was that had that first impact on you – dimming?<\/p>\n

Everyone will have a different list, of course.<\/p>\n

For me, here are the books that I compulsively re-read. I’ll be re-reading these specific books, periodically, until I croak. I can’t say that re-reading them gives me the sensation of the first time I read them … No, the delight is different. (Some of these books I read first when I was a child, others when I was an adult … I think there is a big difference. The books that captured me as a child are literally like magic carpets. I mean, look – I’m tracking them down over the Internet <\/a>as we speak. Even the books I discovered as an adult – like Mating<\/i>, for example, can’t TOUCH that kind of adoration.)<\/p>\n

But for whatever reason, these books are books I will NEVER tire of. EVER. No matter how many times I have read them. I’m being honest here. You can’t be all linear about what you do or do not find to be magical. These books sucked me in the very first time I read them, and I guess they have never really let me go:<\/p>\n

A Wrinkle in Time<\/a>\"\"by Madeleine L’Engle<\/p>\n

Crime and Punishment<\/a>\"\" by Fyodor Dostoevsky<\/p>\n

The “Emily” series<\/a>\"\"<\/a>, by L.M. Montgomery (more so than the Anne of Green Gables series. Anne is wonderful, but Emily, for me, is addictive.)<\/p>\n

Mating: A Novel<\/a>\"\", by Norman Rush<\/p>\n

Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders<\/a>\"\" by Vincent Bugliosi.<\/p>\n

Lives of the Saints<\/a>\"\", by Nancy Lemann<\/p>\n

Sportsman’s Paradise<\/a>\"\", by Nancy Lemann<\/p>\n

Catch-22<\/a>\"\" by Joseph Heller<\/p>\n

Jane Eyre (Penguin Classics)<\/a>\"\" by Charlotte Bronte<\/p>\n

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe<\/a>\"\" by CS Lewis<\/p>\n

Dubliners<\/i><\/a>\"\", by James Joyce<\/p>\n

Hopeful Monsters<\/a>\"\" by Nicholas Mosley<\/p>\n

It (Signet Books)<\/a>\"\" by Stephen King<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So next Tuesday night, if I don’t have rehearsal, I will be at the New York Public Library for the following evening event which sounds faaaaabulous: REREADINGS: Like romantic love, early book-love is ecstatic. As a young reader curls up … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[1077,1757,983,684,585,1758,687,685,714,642],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3630"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3630"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":178687,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3630\/revisions\/178687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}