One of the great things about having a son as a librarian is that he makes great recommendations about what to read. Sometimes he will select titles for me that I would not have selected for myself and I expand the range of my reading in ways that are fun and entertaining. This year, on my birthday, his family gave me a couple of paperback books that he described as “just fun summer reads.” Uncharacteristically, however, because we talk about book all the time, one of the books he gave me is a book that I had previously read. Last week, however, I was between books one evening and I picked up that book that I had already read and discovered that at the back of the book there was an essay that I had not read. I enjoyed the essay and started to look at the study guide at the end of the book. I am the kind of person who almost always reads books from the front cover to the end. The only reason I skipped to the essay at the end was that I had read the main novel. However, after reading the essay and the study guide, I started to read the novel.

I surprised myself. The book was quite entertaining even though I had read it before. I knew the plot of the book. I knew how it ends. There were no plot surprises for me. It was just good writing. There were details that I had forgotten from the first time I read the book.

The experience reminded me of the last few years of my mother’s life. She lived in our home at that time. She had always been an avid reader and when she was widowed at the age of 59, she started to read even more. Books filled up what would have otherwise been empty evenings. For years she kept a steno notebook with a list of the books she had read. However, that notebook was somehow misplaced in one of her moves and by the time she came to live in our home she would simply write down the name of a book in a random place in another of her notebooks when she finished reading. Since there was no longer a formal list, she didn’t return to check to see whether or not she had read a book.

As she neared the end of her life, her memory wasn’t always as reliable as it once had been. Towards the end, she was re-reading books that she had read only a month or so before and enjoying them as if they were first time reads. I know that she didn’t remember here previous readings of the books because her preferred genre was mystery novels and had she remembered, she would know how the novel would end before she got there. It may be that she had an experience of being better able to guess the ending of the books than before. I’m not sure about that. At any rate the same five or six books were adequate to keep her entertained. We just left them around the house and when she finished one, she would pick up another.

We didn’t talk much about her fading memory. She was good at remembering things from earlier in her life and we would often talk of events from her past. She was also very interested in what was going on in our lives and the lives of our children, so we would talk about those things as well. She was always up for a discussion of politics, so we never ran out of things to discuss. If she occasionally would repeat a report on the book she was reading it didn’t bother us at all.

So being so entertained by reading a book that I had previously read got me to wondering. Am I starting to get to the place in my life where I am entertained by reading the same books over and over again. If so, that is a bit worrying. My mother was 20 years older than I am now when she was living in our home. I’m not prepared to be at that place in my life yet.

In my own defense, I was aware that I had previously read the book. I’m not sure my mother was. Secondly, I have a lot of books to which I return time after time. I’ve recently re-read some of my favorite poetry books and a couple of history books because there is great joy in discovering new depths in a familiar text. I have a few books by favorite writers that I love to quote and I pull them from the shelves just to find the quotes and get them accurate. I also return to familiar books when researching materials for teaching. There is nothing strange in my reading a book that I have previously read. I just have not been in the pattern of doing so with novels. Once I know the story, I don’t feel compelled to read it again. This novel, however, was quite entertaining the second time around.

Normally after I read a novel, especially if it is a paperback book, the book becomes a candidate for the little free library down the street from our house. I’m pretty sure that our neighborhood has the best little free library anywhere around because our son and his children have adopted it and they curate its collection, intentionally adding good reads for children and adults and removing books that don’t circulate. However, I’m going to place this particular novel on my bookshelves for now. It isn’t the kind of story to which I would turn for a quote for a sermon illustration. Still, I am not completely convinced that I won’t enjoy reading it a third time. And if I do get to the point in my life where I start reading the same books over and over again at least I want to read good stories and this is a good story.

I’m pretty sure my son didn’t know that I had already read the book, but I guess I can never be certain. Maybe he knows something I don’t. Whatever the case, it is a good thing to have a librarian in the family. His advice on what to read is just right.