Books I returned to in March
Three I kept rereading instead of starting new ones, and what they had in common.
I bought six new books in March and read none of them. Instead I kept returning to three I had already read. The pile of new books is still on the floor by the chair. I am not sorry.
The three#
A short book of essays I have read four times this year. A novel I returned to for the second chapter only, because the second chapter is the best forty pages I know. A reference book I leave open on the floor beside the desk while I work, because of one paragraph I cannot remember correctly.
I will not name them. The list is not the point.
What they share#
Each of them is short. Each of them is dense. Each of them rewards a fifteen-minute return more than a new book rewards a two-hour first read. The math of rereading favours short books with a high density per page.
What I learned#
Rereading is the form of reading I undervalued for years. New books were the metric I was tracking — "books read this year" — which is exactly the kind of metric that fails the test on the previous post.
The right measurement is whether a book is still working on me a year later. The three I returned to clearly are. None of the six I bought has proven anything yet.