Read it again

If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.

François Mauriac, French novelist

François Mauriac

If finding time to read is a challenge for most people, finding time to reread is a much greater challenge. With so many books waiting our attention, how can we dare spend time — some would say waste time — reading the same book multiple times?

Yet I have heard or read about individuals who read certain books, such as Middlemarch or Pride and Prejudice, repeatedly, sometimes as often as once a year. I admire these people. They may not be able to read as many new books as they might wish, but they have managed to find one book that speaks to them deeply and says something new and different each time they return to it. That seems wonderful to me, and as François Mauriac says, the book they choose to reread tells us something about them.

I have read a number of books more than once, and a few three times — J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey, Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King and Graham Greene's Travels with My Aunt come to mind —but taking the time to be dedicated to one particular novel over a lifetime seems like a luxury to me.

My passion for Charles Dickens has come rather late in life, but I think now that Our Mutual Friend or Little Dorrit would be excellent books to devote a lifetime to. They are so long and deep and detailed that it might take a lifetime to fully appreciate them. One reading clearly is inadequate. This helps explain the devotion some have toward Middlemarch. I read George Eliot's novel once and felt like I could only begin to understand all that was going on.

Of course, if one is going to focus on a single book, especially at my stage of life, it would be much easier to choose something shorter. Maybe it's time to pick up Franny and Zooey again. What does that say about me?