Anu Recommends #24
The joys (and pitfalls) of re-reading, a reading update, and a new football essay
Hi and welcome to the Storyteller!
If you missed out on last week’s edition, you can catch up here. If you’re new, welcome! I hope you’ll enjoy your time here. For anyone returning after a while, it’s good to have you back 😊
A few of you reached out to say they’d like to order a signed copy of Pomegranate Summer, and that’s never going to stop feeling incredibly surreal as well as gratifying. There are still some physical copies available if you’re in India, so don’t be shy in reaching out!
This past week also saw my football piece go live. It’s only my second of the year, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it’s about Arsenal 😂 In fact, if you read this piece in January, the new one, titled ‘Premier League 2022-23: This is our Arsenal’, which you can read here, is a sort of companion text that looks back on this extraordinary season that came with its share of excruciating heartbreak but also so much joy and homecoming. It was definitely, if nothing else, greatly therapeutic! If you read it, I’d love to know your thoughts.
Here I am, more than a decade later, with some words, more joy, and an inescapable lurching of pain on the back of a season that deserves the attempt at shouting into the void of football fandom.
The artwork for this, as for the January piece, is by Shivani Khot.
Reading updates
Regular readers of this newsletter know that my reading has been somewhat “slow” in 2023 for many reasons, at least in comparison to past years. I don’t want to jinx a change in the winds so gather around while I whisper-share that the particular phase seems to have passed, and my mind and creative space are ready for stories and other people’s words, and the joy and inspiration that comes with it.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the privilege of reading four upcoming books by very talented writers: The Dane of my Existence by Jessica Martin (July 4, 2023), Business or Pleasure by Rachel Lynn Solomon (July 4, 2023), Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo (August 1, 2023), and Friends Don’t Fall in Love by Erin Hahn (October 17, 2023). I’ll be sharing more thoughts for each, closer to their publishing dates.
It’s the last one in the above mentions that compelled me to revisit Erin’s debut, You’d be Mine (published April 2019) which was my introduction to the author thanks to a publishing friend who sent me the book that spring (thanks, DJ!). A few key characters from that book appear in her latest. And to my delight, the debut was as enjoyable as I remember it being; perhaps even more knowing about these characters and their lives what I know now, how far they go in their journeys of growth and redemption.
Just last month I also reread, as some of you may recall me mentioning, Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. And all of this seems to have put my mood-reader senses bang in the middle of a rereading season. So, my question to you is this: do you reread? Whatever the answer, I’d love to know the reason supporting it!
Why I Reread
Personally, I’ve gone through stages. As a kid and a teen, I reread all the time. It’s possible that some of this was simply the lack and ease of accessibility of new reading material (though, that said, beyond the books my sister and I bought with our dad after final school exams every year, we had a house full of books which I systematically combed through and devoured 😉). But, yes, in comparison to now, when new books—a variety of them, in fact—are available at the click of a few buttons, back then I definitely had more of an incentive to reread, to feed the voracious book-dragon in me 😅 So I do confess that my rereading was rather indiscriminate!
Later, once I got into the business of books, “work reading” increased exponentially, and there were always new books (and old backlist ones patiently waiting on my shelves) clamoring for my attention, time, and energy. And, so, for a few years in between, my rereading, apart from the Lord of the Rings pilgrimage and perhaps a few others some years, was almost nil. Until I realised I missed it; the familiarity, the comfort, the magic of remembrance and nostalgia even as new insights sparkled and others fell into place. I missed the memories pressed between the pages, lying in wait, the slivers of sensory association. Since then, a few years ago, I’ve been consciously returning to the books and stories that meant something to me.
Most times I’m lucky that I love it even more, other times, well, I’m not so lucky. For example, back in 2019, I was doing a Jane Austen readalong. A book a month. February was Pride and Prejudice which was then the only Austen I’d reread (and loved) more than a few times. To my utter dismay, I was so annoyed at all the characters, their frivolity, and what I felt was the obstinate stupidity of the few characters who did claim to have more substance—yes, I know it's all supposed to be part of the book's charm, but for whatever reason, I couldn't read it that way then. Maybe it's just a question of time, place, and my frame of mind, and if I were to pick it up today, I’d love it again. Who knows?
Here’s a list of tested and revisited favourites:
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Literally anything by Neil Gaiman (as well as whatever I have read of Sir Terry—Good Omens is definitely in this list)
Ditto with Lee Child
Ditto with Rick Riordan (apart from the new, co-written The Sun and the Star, which, I’d rather not get into at the moment)
Beartown by Fredrik Backman
The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary
Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
You’d Be Mine by Erin Hahn
In the End It Was All About Love by Musa Okwonga
84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
Summer Solstice by Nina Maclaughlin
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
If you reread, which ones would make/have made your list?
Rereading: a micro essay
I wrote this in early January 2022—let me know if you agree, or what your thoughts are after.
In 2021, more than others, I found myself thinking about small transformations, the ones that happen so silently and infinitesimally that they evade our attention until we catch a sudden glimpse out of the corner of an eye or look up to a change so bright that we wonder if it was ever anything but obvious. Do you ever look upon the selves that you once were and find strangers?
Yet. And yet. There is familiarity there. A beating, throbbing, shining core that makes you you.
How is it possible to hold this contradiction in not just our minds, but also in one's beings, one's very existence? Knowing, all the while that this complexity is exactly what being an authentic human being is.
In 2021, I realised, with more clarity than ever before, that rereading, more than just the act of reading, allows us the space to wrestle with these realisations, to discover and reconcile with who we are, who we were, who we have become at any moment in a string of days, weeks, months, years.
A good book remains the same through the march of time while mirroring all of the world's possibilities and all the iterations of our selves—past, present, future—that we encounter within the pages, first one at a time, then all at once.
Isn't such a story for the ages living proof, the most wonderful metaphor, for the absurdities, depths, and joys of human existence?
There’s one more thing I’d like to share with everyone before I sign off today. A shoutout to Nudge Sports and their brand-new monthly newsletter. They’re India’s only structured mental-conditioning platform (available both in person and as an app) and doing some very cool, and much-needed things in the areas of athlete mental health, well-being, and support. You can subscribe to their newsletter here.
As always, please feel free send in recommendations—books, movie, TV shows, authors to interview, ideas of what you’d like me to write on, rants/ramblings/excited monologues, GIFs and memes (especially them) and more. Just drop me a line and turn this into a conversation, even if just to say hi and let me know what you thought of the latest issue 😊 Or share this with someone you think might enjoy it.
Take care and see you next week!
Anu
If you really like the newsletter, please feel free to buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/anushreenande
You can find me on Twitter at @AnuNande (follow for all the football chatter) and on Instagram at @booksinboston.
Great write-up Anu. I too love to re-read some authors. Some of my favorites are P. G. Wodehouse, P. L. Deshpande, Lee Child, Gerald Durrell, Frederick Forsyth, James Herriot, Terry Pratchett, Michael Crichton, Peter Mayle , Richard Gordon.