“Rereading, not reading, is what counts,” ~ Jorge Luis Borges. 

“When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before,” ~ Cliff Fadiman. 

““If a book isn’t worth reading over and over again, it isn’t worth reading at all.” ~ Oscar Wild

Here is a lists of books I have already reread in my life and I know that I will reread again:

Category Poetry:

• Complete Poems, William Butler Yeats
• 1855 Edition of Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman

Category Non-Fiction:

• Walden, Henry David Thoreau
• Journals, Henry David Thoreau
• Select books of the Bible

Category Fiction:

• The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
• For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
• Short Stories, Ernest Hemingway
• Dracula, Bram Stoker
• Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
• Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson
• War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells
• Complete Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Lost World, Arthur Conan Doyle
• Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jules Verne
• Tortilla Flat, John Steinbeck
• The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett

I could easily add two more lists here. The first one called, “Books I have already reread and am not quite sure that I will reread again.” And another list called, “Books I have read only once so far but wonder if I should reread them.”

For today’s post though, I am concentrating on the books that I have already reread in my life and I know that I will reread again.

As I look at the titles and authors, I try to see what common themes, styles, tones etc. might unite them. I see a few obvious connections:

• The classic characters of Sherlock Holmes, Count Dracula, Long-John Silver, and Sam Spade are iconic, the prototypes of all that would follow
• The Lost World, War of the Worlds, and Journey to the Center of the Earth were written in times when there was still “mysterious places” in our world and our universe
• Whitman and Thoreau, of course, have an intrinsic connection

Beyond those obvious connections things do not seem so clearcut to me. Yeats is the poet I love best and Hemingway the prose writer I love best. But why these particular Hemingway works and not others? And why Tortilla Flat and not the other Steinbeck books I have already reread?

What I do know is that each of these works give me some comfort or some clarity or some experience that has already transformed me and can provide it again.

Why do you reread the books you do?