Jan recently picked up from a thrift store a copy of a Rick Riordan book for her twelve-year-old son, Victor. Victor is an avid Riordan reader, so the title was an inevitable purchase (along with a half dozen other titles that followed Jan home). She left the book on Victor’s bed for him to find after school.
Discovering a new puppy on his bed would not have elicited a more touching response. Victor’s enthusiastic expressions–which were less actual words and more emotional projections, such as gasping and moaning–were intense and moving. “I love this book,” he said. “I get to read it again.” He immediately, in the spot where he was standing, opened the book and began rereading.
What is it about reuniting with a beloved text that moves us so?
Jan wondered aloud about this phenomenon with her husband, Nate, whose favorite book (and hence favorite reread) is Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Nate shared that he has lost count of how many times he has read Atlas Shrugged . For several years he made a point to reread it each year. He said, “Rereading it was always like coming home.”
The analogy is apt.
Coming home is about ease and comfort. It is about knowing the people there and knowing that they know you, much the way a beloved author seems to have an uncanny sense of how you, the reader, are wired. At home, metaphorically at least, you don’t have to work so hard and you get to be yourself (and loved even through your foibles). At home they get you.
Is that it? Does having favorite books and rereading them make us feel loved?
Meanwhile, Jan is rereading Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print by Marilyn Adams.
One doesn’t think of an informational text such as this one, which is dense with complex ideas, as a joyful reread. However, Beginning to Read has long been a beloved text for Jan. It was Jan has read Beginning to Read many times since, highlighting her dog-eared copy in different colors with each rereading, but it has been a while since she has visited the home that this book offers her. The recent conversations about the science of reading prompted Jan to revisit this text, and certainly, reading it has felt like coming home.
And while there is comfort and ease in revisiting familiar, beautifully articulated ideas, humans are ever-changing. We come home, but we aren’t the same people we were the last time we visited. We return with an amalgamated interpretation that includes our memories of earlier visits combined with the perspectives of our present-day selves. published while she was a full-time graduate student, so rereading it brings with it the heady rush of memories of gathering with other teaching assistants to discuss the ideas. The first reading of Beginning to Read was an opportunity to try on new academic identities, a bit like kids playing dress-up.
And so, rereading brings with it a mix of nostalgia and insight, of familiar ideas and new interpretations, of remembering and discovering, and of loving who we were and living in the present moment.
Have you let a favorite book re-love you lately? Remember to find your way home through a beloved text, friends, and in so doing you will likely both remember and discover who you are.
