Tags
Anthony Trollope, Bryant and May series, Christopher Fowler, Diary of a Provincial Lady, George Eliot, Jane Austen, Jude the Obscure, Tanya van Hasselt, Woman's Weekly
That’s how my great-aunts dismissed books. Like all households they had Bibles, prayer books, a cookery book or two, and “ready reckoners” with curious rod, pole or perch measurements. The prayer books were miniscule with tissue paper pages and tiny print, but the horrors of childbirth could be imagined from The Churching of Women.
I have my grandmother’s Enquire Within upon Everything should I need to address the Younger Son of an Earl, prepare a potion for my children because I have made them sick with Brimstone and Treacle, or dance a Quadrille.
What did they do for stories? Woman’s Weekly perhaps, but I think it was taken for the knitting patterns. My mother had a collection of Home Chat magazines that might have contained stories, but I remember its “make do and mend” fashion pages.
Himself and I have shelves of dust collectors in every room. When it comes to novels he and I rarely read the same authors. A mutual favourite is the Bryant and May detective series by Christopher Fowler. Having finished The Water Room I suggested it could go to a charity shop. ‘No,’ he said, ‘when I’m old(!) I’ll have forgotten the plot and will read it again.’
I am not a re-reader of novels. (I can spend hours dipping into Enquire Within. I think I need paragraph 1530 Rules of Conduct drawn up by the celebrated Quakeress, Mrs Fry.)
Exceptions to my no rereading rule are Jude the Obscure – but not Tess of the D’urbervilles, too many dramatisations perhaps – and The Diary of a Provincial Lady, maybe the latter as I have a curiosity for outdated domestic detail, engendered by pouring over those early self-helps.
I think I may be alone among my fellow ninevoices. Tanya has declared that she will not read a novel unless she considers it will be worthy of rereading. This is evident from her character analyses of the works of Austen, Eliot, Trolloppe and many more. Often, too, she is reminded of passages from her favourite novels. However, she has inspired me to buy and rediscover Barbara Pym. I probably read library editions before: one way of limiting the dust collectors.
To read and reread, or enjoy the memory of the first experience? which may, of course, be faulty.
ninevoices 
We had a book cull when we moved house but, like savagely pruning a shrub, it only engendered vigorous re-growth. Books must earn their shelf space by being old and valued friends (Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Black Beauty), new loves (My Dear I Wanted to Tell You, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, The Constant Soldier) or examples of writing brilliance from which I hope to learn (Wolf Hall, Golden Hill – plus all of the above).Then there are our eight shelves of history books…
If it’s on a shelf, I value it, and will re-read it. Otherwise it heads straight to the charity shop. And, like Val’s Jeremy, I think I’d enjoy losing my memory if it meant broaching them afresh.
Goodness, this raises a mass of questions! Why are we reading – for entertainment, for escapism, for consolation, to learn how best to live, to gain insight into other people … there are all sorts of reasons why we turn to books and these reasons will shape which we read just once and which we re-read.
Some books may speak to us very differently as we get older; we see things from an altered perspective and perhaps perceive things we had missed on an earlier reading – Middlemarch is a good example here.
Getting older sometimes makes me feel that there simply isn’t enough time left to read all the clever premise read-once novels available, however excellently written and entertaining they are. But this could be a kind of laziness …
I rarely reread books. I suppose that’s because there are so many new ones that look interesting enough to go on the already massive To Be Read pile. They keep coming along, and kind friends keep suggesting or even lending others to me (you know who you are …).
I can think of only four books I’ve re-read. ‘Persuasion’ and ‘Sense & Sensibility’ (the latter perhaps reread twice): when they’re as good as that you can enjoy the writing, or the hidden things, that you might have rushed past before in your eagerness to see what happens next. Maybe I should do that more often.
‘Hercule Poirot’s Christmas’ I reread to see where the Queen of Crime had sown her clues. And there was the main clue – now I knew it was the main clue it seemed to have neon lights flashing saying Here I Am! like a sign outside an American Diner – but at the first reading I’d hurried past it seeing it as just part of a description, not giving it a second thought. How clever Agatha C was.
The fourth had better go unnamed. I was over a third of the way through it before I realised I’d read it before. I was so unnerved about what this meant for my memory that I started to keep a reading diary.
My bookcase looks more like a game of tetris than a place to store books, I have so many books wedged in there on top of each other. But whenever I look through it to try and thin them out I just can’t bear to lose even one – just in case I want to reread it.
Well you never know when you might be in the mood again.
Em, your bookshelves sound like the ones here! My attempts at thinning out usually mean several (very enjoyable but self-indulgent) hours crouched on the floor, only to end up with more books added to the pile on the bedside table than packed off to the charity shop. And sometimes I find myself randomly recalling a particular paragraph in a book and wanting to re-savour it, only to realise I have given it away…