Haven’t I read this one before…? by Ruth Hatfield

As the only writerly thing I’ve done this month is record an interview for the fantastic Listening Books (do check them out), I’ll have to relapse in this blog to my favourite subject: reading.

More specifically, Books I Have Loved and Re-Read 9,000 times…

What is it that makes it such a joy to read a favourite book over and over again? I’ve got the sort of temperament that gets frustrated by going over something I already know, when there’s always something new to see or do. But re-reading is something I absolutely love. This week I’ve picked up M.M. Kaye’s Shadow of the Moon for what must be at least the twentieth time, and I can’t put it down. Why?

For anyone who doesn’t know the book, it’s a pretty conventionally structured ‘historical romance’ set at the time of the Indian Mutiny. Things in its favour: to me, the prose is stunning, though some people might find it a big long-winded in comparison to modern books. It’s a big book, so there are always a few new details to notice. There’s plenty of scheming and intrigue, besides the romance, and plenty of different points of view put forward by an author who was very familiar with the cultures she was writing about. It’s a fun, exciting book.

 

 But… twenty times? That’s pretty excessive, even for my reading habits. I think the desire to re-read goes further than just having found a good book and wanting to experience again the initial thrill of discovering it. There’s an obvious point that re-reading is in some ways more comforting and less challenging than reading a new book – you know what you’re going to get, after all. Kids want the same stories again and again, and that’s possibly partly the reason. But each time I read Room on the Broom to my daughter, she still manages to notice new things in the pictures. It’s clearly in some ways the same and in some ways different every time.

Maybe it’s because the stories we love become more ‘ours’ every time we read them. Perhaps the ones we fixate on are the ones we wish we’d written, that feel so close to us we think they could almost have come out of ourselves (not necessarily that we’d have had the skill to write them, just that they’re close to our inner creative selves).

Also, some of the precious pony books I had as a child have fallen apart, so many times were they read – I think that was as a result of a strong desire to be inside the words, to know them so intimately that I could imagine myself actually stepping into those worlds, one day in the future, and journeying through their places, befriending their characters, riding their horses…

It’s a tendency I haven’t lost as an adult, although the desires are different. Sometimes I want, desperately, to understand the real world better – I look to books such as The Grapes of Wrath to explain how straitened people can get, and how cruel people can intentionally be, and no matter how many times I tear apart its pages, I can’t get to the logic of it all. Sometimes it’s just fantasy – Jilly Cooper, Mary Stewart, Dick Francis – they all illuminate specific worlds I crave to wander through.

I don’t know quite what I get from M.M. Kaye, apart, perhaps, from her sharp-eyed descriptions of the different views of British people about the occupation of India, but maybe that’s enough – the attitudes of oppressors towards those they oppress and vice versa is a subject large enough to never become tedious, and the question of why it happens can never fully be answered. And each time I read the same views, I see them differently according to what’s going on around me at that moment.

I guess I haven’t got any particularly definite conclusions about exactly why I’m galloping through 600 pages of tiny typescript I already know well, when time is so precious. But perhaps that does lead me to another answer – on a horse, the best gallops are often those on paths where you both already know the length and the terrain. You know there aren’t rabbit holes to watch out for, or gates to stumble over, and you know how long you’ve got to enjoy the speed, so you can just concentrate on what it actually feels like to be in the moment, galloping on a willing horse, with the wind in your face and the drumming of hoofbeats below.

Old Friends Sheena Wilkinson

At a dinner party last week, a family friend said she was getting rid of an old bookcase. ‘And I’m just getting rid of the books too; after all, I’ve already read them.’  When I had recovered from spitting out my wine, I admitted that I have seventeen bookcases in my house (which is perhaps half the size of hers), full of books I have mostly read.

‘But why do you keep them?’ she asked.

‘I just – have to.’

There are two kinds of people: re-readers and non-re-readers. I became a re-reader out of necessity: as a child the local library couldn’t keep up with me, and besides, re-reading was fun. Reading a new book is like going to a party with strangers – it might be wonderful; you might meet exciting new friends; but it might equally be a disaster as you turn the pages sadly, finding nothing to tempt you and wishing you had stayed at home. Re-reading is like curling up by the fire for a gossip with old friends.

I have certain books which I reread every few years. I don’t know when the need will descend or what will spark it off. Sometimes a new book by a favourite author will inspire me with the desire to catch up on her backlist. Sometimes real life will throw something at me that can only be dealt with with the help of fictional old retainers – Antonia Forest’s Marlows got me through being laid up after an accident ten years ago; the months surrounding my father’s death were partly assuaged by daily escapes to the Chalet School.

But you know what happens! But there are so many new books! non-re-readers proclaim.

Yes, I know. I read lots of new books too. Maybe a hundred a year. And have a ‘to-read’ pile in double figures piling up in one of the seventeen bookcases.

But last week, I don’t know why, possibly because things weren’t going well in my WIP, I found that the only thing I wanted out of the thousands of possibilities in my bookshelves, was the Gemma series by Noel Streatfeild. Nothing else would do. Not her best books, and certainly not a model of good editing (Christmas happens twice in Gemma And Sisters within a couple of months.) I know every line of every gorgeous Betty Maxie illustration; I know not only what event is coming next but often every syllable of dialogue, but it doesn’t matter. I enjoyed every word. Again.

                                 

Lazy? Maybe. But sometimes you just want what you want. One day in 2012 I was walking down the Cromwell Road in London when I thought, This is where the Fossils live. And suddenly I needed to read Ballet Shoes. That moment. (Or at least when I got on the tube.) Because I had my kindle with me, I was able to gratify that. Maybe such instant gratification isn’t good for the character, and I probably stopped reading some worthy tome in order to wonder (again) which of the Fossils I would rather be (Pauline, though I know I’m meant to want to be Petrova); but I didn’t care. I was enjoying Ballet Shoes too much.  

Of course it’s comfort reading, and thank God for it. Christmas is coming, and I expect Santa will bring some new books. Possible new friends. But it’s OK if he doesn’t, because I’m going to be curled up by the fire with the Cazalets (again).