Currently Reading Books from the Past

I went to Value Village the other day, making great strides in decluttering and unloading various bits and bobs from the house, and I couldn’t help but take a little gander in the book aisles. Treasures! How can you hope for your kids to become readers if you don’t bury them in books, trapping them within the crags and precipices of stacks, armed with a good book light and some cookies?

The days are getting darker, the wind is getting windier, I contemplate my mortality. I find myself trying to escape the mortal world in a book, wondering if I can glean moral fortitude from the wild woods, skulking about with my flashlight and zero survival skills. We are getting more and more books into the shop because I have no self control and my eyes are bigger than my stomach and because I’m ordering these books late at night when anything is possible, even me reading all of them. A thrill of hope.

Having just moved, all these books that I was am attempting to read are currently buried deep in some boxes, probably not to escape until the vines have taken over the castle and some dashing knight chops his way in. You can imagine what Jon thinks of my indefinite hoarding of saleable inventory.

Despite all this, I’m also in an era of rereading: I’m revisiting books from the past that I once read, and maybe thought were good, or maybe have forgotten about completely. This started off, by chance, with Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, which I picked up from the library on a whim, and had read as an English student in university. Did I actually read it? Maybe not, because I had no recollection of the story at all, which turned out to be excellent. What a ride! Twists and turns everywhere. Highly recommend for some good spooky winter reading.

I also made my way through The Grapes of Wrath, a book whose final scene has left an enduring impression on me since I read it in high school. It’s another good one, and also one to cauterize any nascent notions of food waste you might have. And still also going through my phase of reading the other works of favourite authors. And also still trying the occasional new thing. I have no focus in life.

I rarely reread books: there are so many books out in the world—how can one possibly read them all? You cannot possibly read them all, or at least I cannot. I sometimes feel like I’m wafting around in mediocre books, a waste of time, or precious minutes of life, and so here I am, dipping back into these books from the past, wondering if I’m still the same, wondering if it’s me or the book that’s changed.