A list of books that you reread is like a clearing in the forest: a level, clean, well-lighted place where you set down your burdens and set up your home, your identity, your concerns, your continuity in a world that is at best indifferent, at worst malign.
L.E. Sissman((Poet (slash advertising executive) and winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship as quoted in Alan Jacobs’ The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction.))
Even in normal times, reading is my primary hobby. In the midst of a pandemic, with none of the usual work travel that a typical year involves, that’s even more the case. My time for reading has easily doubled and, as importantly, is no longer interrupted by timezone changes and long flights.
One of the most calming ways to spend that time has been to reread favorite novels. These are those enjoyable stories that I find easy to reside within. They don’t have to be profound works of Literature, just books that I connect with.
Rereading brings something familiar back into the day. You catch an echo of previous readings and past versions of yourself. As the poet quoted above notes, rereading provides a piece of understood continuity in a world that can be anything but.
James Hilton’s Lost Horizon is near the top of this list for me. Pretty much anything by Hermann Hesse is, too, though The Glass Bead Game remains a particular favorite. And Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series held up unexpectedly well despite (or maybe because of?) a 20-something year gap from my last reading.((Try to ignore the cover art on the current edition, which feels very non-canonical; such is the problem of locking the first edition you read in your mind as The Right Edition.))
If you’ve not read a favorite novel in years, pick it up again. Give your brain a break from the world and any desire to be productive, just let it fall back into a familiar story and pattern at a time when we lack those things.