I own a fair number of books.
Some are books I’ve yet to read, but most are books I’ve already read. My partner and I joke (kind of) that I am a pretty hard-core minimalist except when it comes to hoarding books. “Reader” is a core aspect of my identity.
Have you ever gone back and reread a book that was deeply important to you two or three years ago? I am currently rereading Steven Pressfield’s classic The War of Art, which I first read in 2018 as part of a book discussion group.
Back then, the book changed my life. We often use that phrase hyperbolically, but in this case, it’s not an exaggeration. My entire way of thinking about my work as a musician changed after reading that one book.
This morning, during my morning reading hour, I picked up the book and came across a page I had earmarked back in 2018. I thought to myself, “Surely this will be good—this will give me a little zhuzh of inspiration.”
I read the page and felt…nothing. I was confused. Why did I earmark this page four years ago? I tried to think back to what I was experiencing back then to make this one page particularly stick out to me. My process of marking up books isn’t particularly standardized—sometimes I underline, sometimes I star, sometimes I make notes in the margins, sometimes I do all three—but I almost never earmark pages. So what was this rare expression of “hell yes to THIS!” all about? I can’t remember.
It threw into relief this truth: that what we are experiencing now, in this moment, will not last. A week or a month or four years down the road, the thing that is currently gnawing at us, or inspiring us, or frustrating us, likely won’t elicit the same response. It’s like spiritual taste buds that change over time.
Conversely, on another page of the book, something resonated with me that apparently didn’t back in 2018. I underlined it today in black ink instead of blue (the color I used back then). This is why rereading books is so powerful. The message of the book breathes and evolves as you do, and truths that you weren’t ready to accept on the first pass “ripen” (to use a Rilke term) and resonate on the next pass.
I love my book collection for this reason. It’s like an almanac of my journey. To quote a friend of mine, “Home is where your books are.”