Books I Return To

All my life, I’ve loved to re-read. When I was 9, I checked out The Butter Battle Book by Dr. Seuss from the school library and renewed it every month for the entire year. Something about the gadgetry fascinated me, and I spent hours poring over the Yooks’ and Zooks’ extravagant armaments and accompanying uniforms.

A few years later, I read Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, and ended up going back to it again and again. The appeal at that age was clear: solitude, self-sufficiency, and a forest all to one’s self.

I am still a re-reader, regularly going back to favorites just like the swallows of San Juan Capistrano. Some books convey a time, a place, or a culture so irresistibly that I find myself wishing to revisit: the North Africa of The Stranger by Albert Camus and Collected Short Stories by Paul Bowles; the foggy and gaslit London of The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; the artistic melting pot of 1920s Paris in A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway.

There are others. I pick up Tenth of December by George Saunders for its razor-sharp wit, Black Swan Green by David Mitchell for its characters, and Narrow Road to the Interior by Matsuo Bashō for its depth and perspective.

Each time I return to these books, I discover something new and precious, while at the same time settling into the familiarity and comfort that they provide. Even as I read and enjoy something for the first time, I won’t forget that these books continue to shape me.