Thanks to Jen B. for submitting this interesting take on rereading:

This is very random, but I thought of a topic for the SBTB editors to bat around: I know you’ve done comfort reads and favorite re-reads, but does anyone have a book that you read at such a perfect time in your life that you won’t re-read it, because it will never be as good? I had just moved to a new state, the pandemic lockdowns started the day after I arrived, I was in a half-furnished apartment, and I read Evvie Drake Starts Over. It was such a gentle, healing novel about finding yourself, and it was exactly what I needed. While I’m a big novel re-reader, I’ve never touched this one again because I don’t think it will ever hit me with that much force again. Does anyone else have a book like this? Or is this a me thing?

Sarah: It’s like the opposite of “in case of emergency, break glass” books – the “a perfect experience, place this behind glass”

In college we had a tiny shelf of popular novels (it was a tiny school) and there were occasional Elizabeth Lowell, Amanda Quick and Nora Roberts novels. Maybe 4? Not many.

But one day I picked up Charms for the Easy Life by Kaye Gibbons.

I don’t remember a single thing about this book except the tranquil and hopeful feelings that it left me with when I was done

If I went back now 30 years later, this book might not work for me at all. I just remember the experience of having it ease a considerable amount of stress at a time when I needed comfort.

I’ve never read it again.

Amanda: TW for depression

I’m not a re-reader typically, so I think this is an interesting way to view the decision not to reread books. I do worry that some of my favorites won’t hold up and I’m fine to just preserve that singular reading experience in my mind.

For me, I think I’d pick The Bride by Julie Garwood for my top spot of “perfect experience place behind this glass.” I was really deep into my depression and it was the year I read 212 books because all I did was read and make daily trips to pick up my library holds. (Shout out to the Alachua County library and their amazing Friends of the Library sales.) I really lost myself in this book and it gave my bad brain such a distinctive restful break. I’m perfectly okay with freezing that experience in time.

Sneezy: Oh dang, this is such a good question.

Sarah: Amanda, yes – exactly that. I was miserable and stressed and lonely and that book turned all that off for a while.

Sneezy: It’s not until I was thinking about this question that I realized I don’t want to reread Pride and Prejudice. The first time I read the book, it was a translated version edited for children. I did try when my English got better. I was excited to read a famous author in her native language, especially a book I had such fond memories of, but was never able to read more than a few pages. I felt guilty about it for a while, because it felt like a book I was ‘supposed’ to read and one I know I like. Reading what Jen, Sarah, and Amanda wrote made me realize it wasn’t a matter of want, but can’t. Of all the books I read before my family moved to Canada, somehow that book belongs specifically to Smol Sneezy, the one who’s yet to be hyphenated. It got ambered in dimming afternoons and extra thick white toast slathered with peanut butter and my mom’s favourite violin album, well beyond my reach.

It’s a little strange to realize this. It’s not a feeling of nostalgia in the sense that I yearn to return to that time, just a deep sensory memory that cannot be intruded on even if I wanted to. The book feels like an embodiment of paths forever closed, or perhaps more accurately, sacrificed to forge vastly different ones. I have great appreciation for what I have now, but it is a loss all the same.

Sarah: You were a different person when you read it, and you can’t go back?

As in, you and the circumstances around you were different and that can’t be replicated?

Lara: Such a great question! I went through a horrific breakup in 2011 and had temporary insomnia. By chance, a friend recommended the Carol Jordan and Tony Hill series by Val McDermid. I was wrapped up in it. Obsessive. It was precisely what my broken heart needed. I haven’t been tempted to revisit these books because they so perfectly met my needs in that moment.

Tara: I used to reread Jane Eyre at least once a year when I was in high school and university. I have a notoriously bad memory, but I remember the day my grade 9 English teacher handed it to me in the library because she thought I’d love it and she was right! Now, I can’t go back because I think Jane could have done so much better than Mr. Rochester. It’s better to have positive memories of it as a comfort reread than to bring my current lens and get mad about it.

What about you? Do you have special books that you can’t bring yourself to reread?