Rereading an Old Favorite

Last night, after being exhausted and sluggish all day, I crawled into bed around 11 and immediately woke up completely. This often happens to me. Somehow the act of getting into bed signals my insomnia to kick in. So, I figured I would read for a while. I’m in between books at the moment, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to read next, so I decided to do one of my favorite things: rereading a favorite book.

I do this all the time, and I’ve realized over the years that most people find it a bit odd that I have read some books five times or more. For every book I reread, there’s a new book I haven’t read. But when I am feeling out of sorts or sleepless or sick, there’s something extremely comforting about reading something I know and love.

But not just any book will do. White Noise, Lolita, and Independent People are among my favorite books, and I’ve read them more than once, but if I’m feeling a little blue, they’re not the kind of book I turn to.

The classics that I reread on a regular basis include

Anything by Nancy Mitford, but preferably The Pursuit of Love
Anything by Jane Austen (but Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice top the list)
Generation X by Douglas Coupland
The Other Side of the Fire and Unexplained Laughter by Alice Thomas Ellis
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
The Lover by Marguerite Duras
The Daughter of Time, Brat Farrar, or anything else by Josephine Tey
Anything by Agatha Christie (particularly when I’m sick)

They’re comfortable and welcoming. In several cases, the covers are dog-eared and falling apart. These books have been well loved.

Last night, I chose The Pursuit of Love. Fifty pages in, I came to two realizations: (1) this was going to be a bad night in terms of sleep, and (2) I have read this book so many times that I could probably recite it. I am now qualified to write one of those annotated editions explaining all the obscure 1930s British cultural references and which friend or relative of Nancy Mitford each character was based on. This is either awesome or really scary. I actually used a quote from it on my wedding program. One of the guests told me he almost cried when he read it. I was extremely pleased.

When things are really bad, I’ve been know to turn to such childhood classics as

Little Women
Anne of Green Gables (or any of the other novels in the series)
The Secret Garden
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Anything by Enid Blyton

I’m not sure how well known Enid Blyton is to an American audience, but she is identified by the ever-reliable Wikipedia as the fifth most popular author in the world. This is quite plausible, since she wrote hundreds of books and they’ve been translated into dozens of languages. I know and love her from having spent part of my childhood in Ireland, where her books were everywhere. I read and reread her books throughout childhood (apparently, this habit started early for me). I would lend the books to friends, all of whom loved them as well. Lord Merlin loved them so much that he used to borrow my copies and write his name in them and insist they were his. Her mystery series (including the Secret Seven, the Famous Five, and the Five Find-Outers) are all delightful, as are the standalone books. I just found out that many of her books are available in fairly cheap new editions, so I may have to buy a few (although the newer editions have been altered to make them more PC. I can see the point of cutting the racist language, but is it really necessary to excise every use of the word queer or gay? I suppose it’s assumed that modern children are too stupid to know that these words might have other meanings). Is there something wrong with me that I would rather read books written over 50 years ago that I enjoyed from ages 5 to 11 (to be fair, this isn’t as bad as it sounds. I was an advanced reader—I was totally reading at a fourth-grade level in first grade. Everyone wanted to hang out with me.) than anything else on my shelves? I probably shouldn’t mention that Nancy Drew phase I went through a few years.