Going back to the well

Rereading: because sometimes once is just not enough

Jul 08, 2023

Before we begin

What drives you back to a book for another read? Are there books that you reach for over and over again or are you a one-and-done kind of reader? What about movies or TV series? What do we get out of a story that we already “know”?

Delia and me

Exactly six months ago, I published my aspirational TBR list for the year. That list includes 87 books. Since then I’ve read 29 books and of those, only 9 were on my list. I knew there was no way I would ever read all 87 but I usually manage between 50 and 54 books a year, sometimes more.

Gustave Courbet (artist) French, 1819 - 1877 National Gallery of Art...

I am struck by a number of realizations as I gaze at this list of 29 but perhaps the least surprising is that five of them are books I have read before and may yet read again before my time on this earth is over. Every list since I’ve been keeping lists has a significant number of books I’ve read before.

I thought about this the other night as I reached for Anne Tyler’s Ladder of Years. I didn’t have to reach far; it was just above my bed on an entire shelf that her entire oeuvre shares with that of Ann Patchett’s. The “Anns” write about worlds I inhabit and find ways to get at the big questions by focusing on the everyday.

I first read Ladder of Years when I was younger, more restless. I was captivated by the notion of a mother, Delia, just walking away from her family and her life in nothing but her bathing suit and coverup. I remember being frustrated a bit by an ending that was entirely void of grand declarations and conflicts resolved. I read it again around the time my son moved out on his own and understood that Delia's act of walking away could be viewed as a pre-emptive move to protect herself but also, possibly, as the act of a woman who understood at a subconscious level that leaving would help her children step into adulthood. I’ve read it since but it wasn’t until the other night as I closed in on the last pages yet again that I understood how well Tyler captured the perfect storm of midlife - loss, mortality, growing up, reaching out, resistance, acceptance, seeing things anew, finding one’s footing, and moving forward. I’d reached for it because I needed something “easy” to read before bed. Instead, I found a masterclass in how to observe humans without getting in their way, lessons I am constantly trying to keep in mind as I write.

Nearly three years ago, I read a short illuminating essay by the writer Jenny Offill whose insightful, funny, compact novel Weather added another layer to my understanding of the shapes a novel could take. In the essay, Offill explores the way reading Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway at different points of her life gave her a window into her own evolution. She opens with a reference to Woolf’s own take on re-reading:

“In 1916, Virginia Woolf wrote about a peculiarity that runs through all real works of art. The books of certain writers (she was speaking of Charlotte Brontë at the time) seem to shape-shift with each reading. The plot might become comfortingly familiar, but the emotional revelations within it change. Scenes once passed over as unimportant begin to prickle with new meaning, as if time itself had been the missing ingredient for understanding them. Woolf went on to describe the works she returned to again and again:
At each fresh reading one notices some change in them, as if the sap of life ran in their leaves, and with skies and plants they had the power to alter their shape and colour from season to season. To write down one’s impressions of Hamlet as one reads it year after year, would be virtually to record one’s own autobiography, for as we know more of life, so Shakespeare comments upon what we know.

I felt that “prickle” of new meaning when I picked up Ladder of Years this week. I read for the umpteenth time when Delia’s husband comes as close as he can get to asking Delia to return for good but doesn’t quite get those words out. For the entirety of the book, Delia had been listening for those words even as she’d gone about making a new life in a new town. She never gets to hear her husband say them “in so many words.” Instead she behaves as though he’d said them.

I’ve always wondered about that, always felt it a bit unsatisfying. I saw too, though, that Delia had never been the woman I’d imagined her to be in my first or even my second or third reading. I’d persistently imposed my own idea of who she should be, what she should do. I wanted her to be my idea of strong, probably because in those years I’d struggled with how to be strong, less of a pushover. This time she seemed more real, more like someone who has grown enough to understand that we don’t always get what we want but if we are lucky we get enough of what we need to keep going. I saw again how Anne Tyler so beautifully captures the flawed, incomplete ways that humans communicate; how the words say one thing and the behavior another. Instead of the grand gesture, the big ending, we get a glimmer of understanding, a peek at the future which still could go any number of ways. And it’s okay.

I return to books I’ve already read for any of the following reasons, sometimes all at once:

I’m yearning for a familiar world and a familiar voice
I have the feeling I missed something the first time around
I am looking for inspiration or examples of how to make a book work - structure, characters, beginnings, endings, language. Right now, my writing desk is surrounded by stacks of books I pick up and put down when I need to see, yet again, how a writer did something I am trying to do.
Research or to refresh my memory in order to write about the book
Something I can’t identify - my internal “book compass” – steers me back to a book because I need it.

In a future newsletter, I want to explore my relationship with a book over time. I have one in mind that, in fact, called my name as I was packing for my trip east a few weeks ago. The book, An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine, went into the backpack that was then lost. The urge to re-read it has only grown. I’ll discover why when I read the copy I just bought to replace it. I look forward to sharing it with you.

What about you?

If there is a single book that has called you back time and again, please share it with us along with what pulls you back and how your views of the book and yourself have shifted over time.

In the meantime, here are a few links for readers and re-readers alike

On how to disregard TBR lists and “read recklessly” by Adam Sternbergh
Why don’t I reread more often? asks Michael Dirda, Washington Post who captures what drove his reading choices over each life stage in New Books are Alluring But Don’t Discount the Value of the Familiar
Memoirist Vivian Gornick captures the way her rereading reflects her own arc in her book Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-reader.” She read from the book and talked about how re-reading is, perhaps, true reading at the Strand a few years back.

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Meet a Spark Author: Cynthia Newberry Martin

We will regularly highlight an author from our ranks of subscribers with published books. You’ll find all the authors here at our Spark Authors Page along with more information about how to add your name and books to the list. This week, we are highlighting Cynthia Newberry Martin who launched two novels this year and is in the process of visiting independent bookstores in all 50 states for events that support her books, the bookstores and books published by small presses. Like all the author on our list, she is available for meeting with book clubs.

Author: Cynthia Newberry Martin

Writes: Fiction (Literary)
Books: Tidal Flats, Love Like This, The Art of Her Life
What readers say: "Love Like This is an astonishment. The novel comes on like a quiet exploration of the empty nest syndrome, but quickly deepens into an exploration of female identity, desire, and the utter unpredictability of love. Cynthia Newberry Martin’s prose is confident, precise, and, when required, as bold as a billboard. The story she’s crafted shocked and delighted me.” —Steve Almond, author of All the Secrets of the World
Akin to: Lily King, Anne Tyler, Ann Patchett, Dawn Tripp
Interviews/articles: The Rumpus Mentor Series: Cynthia Newberry Martin and Pam Houston

Newsletter/Blog: How We Spend Our Days

You can browse all our authors on our Spark Author’s Page and on our special shelf at Bookshop.org.

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Spark Writing Professionals & Their Services

Announcements

Between now and next Saturday, I will be turning 67. There, I said it. It’s out there. In most ways, it will be just another day. The best way I can think of to observe this event is to work hard on my novel so that is what I’m going to do. This means next week’s Spark will be a lighter issue featuring a roundup of favorite reads from the past. If you have any favorite posts from Spark, or anywhere in the universe, share them here or reply to this email and I’ll add them to the list.

Better yet…Let’s fill up on some Zen moments. Send some beauty, laughs, wonder our way.

Here is me, after my morning ablutions, before sitting down to work this week, getting ready to be the oldest I’ve ever been:

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Welcome to all new subscribers! Thank you so much for being here. If you would like to check out past issues, here’s a quick link to the archives. Be sure to check out our Resources for Readers and Writers too where you will find links for readers, book clubs, writers, and writing groups. And if you’d like to browse for your next read, don’t forget to check out books by authors in our community at the Spark Author Page or the many wonderful reviews you’ll find among the #Bookstackers.

That’s it for this week. Thank you for being here. Let me know how you are and what you are reading or what idea took hold of you this week and wouldn’t let you go.

Ciao for now.

Gratefully,

Betsy

P.S. And now, your moment of Zen…for some, it’s the Dude, for me, it’s Vinny

Some movies are made to be watched over and over again. I don’t usually seek out the same movie again and again but when I do? It’s gotta be Vinny and Mona Lisa Vito.

Calling for Your Contribution to A Moment of Zen

What is YOUR moment of Zen? Send me your photos, a video, a drawing, a song, a poem, or anything with a visual that moved you, thrilled you, calmed you. Or just cracked you up. This feature is wide open for your own personal interpretation.

Come on, go through your photos, your memories or just keep your eyes and ears to the ground and then share. Send your photos/links, etc. to me by replying to this email or simply by sending to: elizabethmarro@substack.com. The main guidelines are probably already obvious: don’t hurt anyone -- don’t send anything that violates the privacy of someone you love or even someone you hate, don’t send anything divisive, or aimed at disparaging others. Our Zen moments are to help us connect, to bond, to learn, to wonder, to share -- to escape the world for a little bit and return refreshed.