“The stability of reread books helps to create a solid sense of self…it records both the development and continuity of the self” -Patricia Meyer Spacks. In other words, when you reread a book after a period of time, the book stays the same, but the reader (you) is quite different. 

    During my spring break I had a sudden memory of a book, of which I couldn’t remember a title or a character name. It was one I had read years ago, in early middle school and probably hadn’t thought about since up until that moment. I took it upon myself to try and find this book, thinking about how great it would be to reread it. After a couple of google searches with the few random scenes I could remember – I found it. It was Mildred Taylor’s The Land.  After experiencing a bit of nostalgia from the description I thought about all of the other books I had read and loved but never thought to reread after the many years. Determined, I made a list of the books I could remember- and googled scenes from them until I could find the ones I didn’t. When I was younger I had a love for historical fiction, so that’s what most of these books were. Some of them include:

• Bud, Not Buddy -Christopher Paul Curtis
• Of Mice and Men -John Steinbeck
• Where the Red Fern Grows -Wilson Rawls
• The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman -Ernest J. Gaines
• The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963 -Christopher Paul Curtis
• North by Night: A Story of the Underground Railroad -Katherine Ayres
• The Boxcar Children -Shannon Eric Denton
• When You Reach Me -Rebecca Stead

    Since the break I have been rereading these and the amount of happiness I feel when I remember a certain line, scene, or character is exhilarating; as you are rereading the book, you start to feel very comfortable and relaxed. You also notice things you may not have noticed the first time your younger mind read it; this has happened to me a lot.

    In The Atlantic, Emma Court writes about the unexpected benefits of rereading your old books:  “…revisiting [childhood favorites] as adults can also provide comfort, relaxation, and the pleasure of rediscovery. Not only do rereaders rediscover the story, but they may also rediscover themselves.”

    Rereading “reminds us that we can experience something intensely and not be seeing everything at the time. And going back, we see something different,” says Jill Campbell, an English professor at Yale. “It’s a way of thinking more about a book that’s had an impact on you, but it’s also a way of thinking about your own life, memories, and experiences. The continuities and the differences.”

    Knecht, a writer and licensed therapist who writes Literary Hub’s “Dear Book Therapist” advice column, says of rereading that “when you’re feeling stagnant, like you’ve made no progress, it gives a shape to that experience and suggests it will pass.” In that way, it can be therapeutic because “therapy is about telling your story and having someone challenge you sometimes about the way you’re telling that story,” she says, “until you get it into a shape that you can live with and move forward with.”

    `These quotes and the telling of my personal experience show that the joy that comes from rereading a book is something that everyone should feel. If you were never one for reading, people are said to have also felt the same way when they rewatched a movie or visited a place that they haven’t seen or been to in years.