Of Re-reading Books There Is No End, by Ben Jeapes

Photo by Oziel Gómez from Pexels.

I’ve been contributing to this blog for nearly eight years, which is only a notable anniversary if you count in base 8. However, my second post was drawn from my then-recent reading of Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers: "Doris Lessing and Miss Lydgate", about finding the balance between making your writing as good you can, and just publishing it, and this comes to mind now because I’m just starting to re-read that book.

Do I expect the text to have changed much? Not at all. Do I expect the experience to be different? Oh, yes – hugely.

The first time around I already knew the basic story, because I had seen the TV version with Edward Petherbridge and Harriet Walter. Previously I had watched all the Ian Carmichael depictions of Lord Peter Wimsey, so I knew generally about Wimsey’s world. However, it was the first of the series I had ever read. It stood on its own, on its own merits, and needed no knowledge of what had gone before to appreciate it, like any good novel should. But, now I‘ve read the nine books that came before it, I expect to get much more out of it.

What is it about revisiting a book you have already read? I don’t do it so much nowadays, though when I was young I would reread books into the ground and they never got old. One of the tests of a good book, of course, is that you can do so. But, when I was young it was more about recapturing or repeating a particular experience – like coming off the swings and immediately wanting to go back on again. I don’t think I ever expected the experience to change or be better than before.

I forget who it was who said something like every time you read the Bible, you bring to it every other time you have read the Bible. It is never (or should never be) the same person re-reading the same passage, because the passage has changed the original person. We grow, we build, we evolve.

I think the nicest thing that could ever happen to me as an author would be for someone to say they had re-read a book and got something out of it I hadn’t even realised was there. Hasn’t happened yet, but who knows …

Ben Jeapes took up writing in the mistaken belief that it would be easier than a real job (it isn’t). Hence, as well as being the author of eight novels and co-author of many more, he has also been a journal editor, book publisher, and technical writer. His most recent title is a children’s biography of Ada Lovelace. www.benjeapes.com