Nothing Remains the Same - Wendy Lesser

I have the following conversation with my mom probably on a weekly basis: one of us asks the other, "so what are you reading?" The response is given. Then one of us says, "There are so many books to read, I need to quit my job and just read." Then we talk about how many books we have to read and how we'll never get through them all. You'd think that reading was a torturous endeavor, as opposed to the exciting relaxing one that we all know it can be. Yet, despite all the books I have yet to read, I do find myself often wanting to go back to books I read when I was younger. Sometimes I do this with disastrous results - discovering that a character I once identified with and admired is now simply irritating and immature (Holden Caulfield, Howard Roark). Other times, I find that a book I struggled to get through and found boring is suddenly transformed into a highly relevant story (anything by Dickens). So, I was interested in reading this book - which is about the very act of re-reading old favorites. While the author chose many books that I was either not familiar with, or ones that I should have read but have never gotten around to (for example, she lists Anna Karenina as one of those books that everyone wants to re-read - and I admit I have never read anything by Tolstoy) - I still found her observations and reactions to re-reading books, sometimes nearly 40 years after her first reading, quite insightful. Lesser has a deep literary background having studied at Harvard, Cambridge, and Berkeley, so sometimes her references are a bit esoteric, but I thought she really captured the idea that as readers, we like books that remind us of ourselves. As a young 20-something in a tumultuous relationship, she identified with free-spirits, while decades later she finds their choices impetuous and ill-conceived. Also, with more years under belt, came more reading, and as a result more points of reference from which to enjoy or criticize a given book or author's perspective. Nothing Remains the Same is a good concept book to me. I wouldn't say that I loved it or found it incredibly fascinating, but I like the idea of reflecting on reading - what books mean to me and why - and how as life changes, so do the things that are important and bring meaning to us.