A non-reader would roll their eyes, but I believe that rereading books is not an insignificant endeavor.
In my mind, it is one of the highest honors that a reader can nearly bestow on an author.
See, readers read.
And any serious reader that I know has a list of at least a few hundred books on their Wish List. And often, that Wish List of “to be looked at one-day” books is growing as fast as books are being read and crossed off of it.
So to stop and reread an already read book is a complete enigma.
It’s like putting your life on pause for a reason you can not exactly put your finger on.
I referenced this rereading point when I pointed to re-reading The Education Of A Speculator,
There needs to be a special title for one’s library of reread books…
The poet L. E. Sissman offers this evocative image: A list of books that you reread is like a clearing in the forest: a level, clean, well-lighted place where you set down your burdens and set up your home, your identity, your concerns, your continuity in a world that is at best indifferent, at worst malign. Since you, the reader, are that hero of modern literature, the existential loner, the smallest denominator of moral force, it behooves you to take counsel, sustenance, and solace from the writers who have been writing about you these hundred or five hundred years, to sequester yourself with their books and read and reread them to get a fix on yourself and a purchase on the world that will, with luck, like the house in the clearing, last you for life.
-Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures Of Reading In An Age Of Distraction
