Books I Return to Again and Again (and Again)

Posted by David Duhr in ABCs of Writing      10 comments

Jun
16

A few weeks ago I wrote a post where I talked about how I’ve never read Philip Roth and then listed a whole heap of others writers and books I’ve never read.

This week, I want to list for you every book and writer I have read.

Nah, just kidding. Although, as I’ve written about before, a few years ago I did start keeping track of every book I read.

I had cause to scan those lists recently, and I took note of some titles that pop up often, not every year, but with a frequency that makes them stand out.

Rereading is interesting. I think there are three reasons I reread:

1) Some books, like Lincoln in the Bardo, I restart again as soon as I finish. Usually I do this because I’m unclear, but curious, about the way it impacted me the first time.

2) Others I’ll revisit many years, sometimes decades, after a first read. Often I do this because I’m curious to see how my life in the interim has impacted my reading of the book. In other words, to think about how I’ve changed as a reader, and as a person, since the first time. The book itself hasn’t changed since I first read it, so if my reading experience is different the second time, it probably means that I’ve changed.

3) The third category is books I read again and again because I love them and can’t stay away.

In the comments I want to hear about all of your favorite rereads, and what makes them so.

Here are a few of mine:

Johnny Tremain, Esther Forbes: I’ve written and talked about this book so much that I feel like I’m beating a dead horse, which is a candidate for the oddest and most violent expression in our language. This book, which I first read in adolescence and still read just about every other year, has affected my life in innumerable ways.

Beatlebone, Kevin Barry: This is among my favorite novels, and I just finished my fourth reading of it. (It came out in 2015!) It’s a fictionalized account of John Lennon journeying to his private island off the west coast of Ireland in 1978 in an effort to bust through a creative nadir, but so much of it is about Barry himself. It’s beautiful and lyrical and dripping with delicious melancholy.

Jazz, Toni Morrison: I can’t quit reading this book. I feel like it’s an underrated entry in Morrison’s bibliography, often overshadowed by Beloved, which is sometimes seen as the first entry in a trilogy where Jazz is the middle and Paradise the third. Beloved is without a doubt an unforgettable book, and I’ve read it, too, several times. But Jazz does something to me that no other Morrison book, or maybe even no other novel, does. I find something new and beautiful in it every single time.

Bottom of the 33rd, Dan Barry: Many of you know I’m a baseball obsessive and that the game plays a huge role in my own book. I’ve read hundreds of baseball books, and will read hundreds more if I live long enough, but I can’t imagine any unseating this as my favorite. It covers a 1981 minor league baseball game in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, but what it’s really about is aspiration, and then coping when aspirations turn into busted dreams. Like the other Barry book on my list, this one is full of melancholy and beautiful, lyrical writing.

The Coast of Chicago, Stuart Dybek: In the same way I can’t imagine loving another baseball book the way I love Bottom of the 33rd, I can’t imagine ever reading a story collection that makes me feel the way Dybek’s does. Like I say on a recent episode of Yak Babies, I want to crawl into this book and die. Standouts include “Hot Ice” and “Blight,” but if you want to try only one story to get a sense of this book, read “Pet Milk.” If you don’t like that, you won’t care for the rest. If you do, the whole collection just might change everything for you.

Your turn: What are some books you return to again and again, and why? What do you get out of rereading them? Do you find something new in them every time?

WriteByNight co-founder David Duhr is copy editor and fiction editor at the Texas Observer and has written for books for the Dallas Morning News, the Iowa Review, Electric Literature, and others.

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