I’m tired, which is mostly my fault. Mostly, because I’m the one who stayed up until 2:45 a.m. reading, knowing I had to wake up to get the kids to school and myself to work, but only mostly because I haven’t felt fully rested in years. Maybe over a decade.
I could talk a little about 11/22/63 by Stephen King. I could talk a lot about it, truthfully. It’s a paperweight of a book, over 800 pages, with an incredible story (natch, from the master of stories) nestled snugly between historical details, contemporary pop culture touches, and more to think about than meets the eye — as is the case with most good stories.
Instead, because I’m tired, I simply want to talk about why I re-read books I love, sometimes while books I’ve been waiting to read rest a little longer on my “on deck” shelf.
I can’t remember the first time I read 11/22/63, though I could probably figure it out if I tried hard enough. The important thing is that I’ve read many, many books in between. I’ve done many, many things in between readings, too, though they’re all more mundane than time traveling to twist apart events in the past.
Re-reading books means seeing them with a different lens. Not a new lens, but a different one. To use a personal anecdote, since I last read 11/22/63 (before this week), I read The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, a book I thought about for a long time after closing its pages. A book I still think about, now, and a book I thought about while reading Stephen King’s story about trying to change some major historical events.
When you’re feeling a little stuck, the idea of tweaking past decisions happens to the best of people, at least I imagine it does. As someone with a couple of major life decisions I sometimes question (related to writing and geography, mainly), reading Stephen King’s story after reading The Midnight Library gave 11/22/63 a different texture than it’s had in the past.
Changed decisions, even those that lead to positive outcomes, don’t always mean a brighter future. I need to remember that.
Either way, 11/22/63 read differently to me this time, and the next time I read it, I expect it will have shifted again. The kaleidoscope of time and experience make it impossible to come to a book in exactly the same way, and for that I am grateful.
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