I want to point out this piece by Kerry Clare about re-reading Elizabeth Strout's Lucy Barton series and how re-reading can change your viewpoint.
This is a post about a lot of things. It’s about being wrong, and dismissing certain ideas and ways of being, and the question of how one knows what’s good, all of which are actually themes of Elizabeth Strout’s Lucy Barton books, which begins with My Name is Lucy Barton, and continues with the story collection Anything is Possible, Oh, William, and, finally, Lucy By the Sea.
She didn't much like My Name is Lucy Barton when she first read it. Or even when she read the sequels. But then she decided to re-read them because so many other people she respected loved them.
And I’ve got to tell you that everything I thought was weird and slight about the Lucy Barton novels is still right there. The downright unfashionableness of the project too, the quiet, the earnestnes, so many exclamation marks!! (!!). Telling, not showing. She’s breaking all the rules I know of how to write a novel well, and it’s my immediate instinct to dismiss these books again. I’m only considering them again because other people are telling me that they’re good, instead of me knowing that in my bones. And isn’t that everything we’re advised against as readers, as critics, as humans? Of following the crowd, reading like sheep?
But she also said:
But still, to remain open. This is the object, I think. To stay curious. To look backwards and wonder if there is something you might have missed, some part of the puzzle you might have failed to understand.
And then she finally got it. I recommend this post. I used to re-read books all the time but I haven't in years - too little time. But I need to make time for it.
