Re-reading for Democracy and Joy
Hey Friends,
Now is a time for re-reading. I’ve often wondered why we are so likely to listen to the same song over and over, but less likely to read a book again, or even a passage. It’s true there are so many books to be read, but also so many songs to hear. They are both beautiful and haunting in their familiarity and, how something we think we know can shift in meaning. Understanding, comfort, encouragement, and inspiration can come from words we have seen before.
I think we are entering a great re-reading time in part because of what’s happening in our world. There are historical precedents. Some of this – discrimination, brutality, authoritarianism – has happened before, and historians and novelists were there for it.
Sales of books like George Orwell’s “1984” and Octavia Buter’s “Parable of the Sower” surged after the 2024 election. The book “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the 20th Century” by Timothy Snyder was published in 2017 and is now a number one New York Times bestseller. It’s a guide to resistance in the face of challenges to democracy.
As a journalist, I’ve long been a re-reader, finding something that I knew spoke to me, researching, remembering. I’m also finding a yearning to read books and stories written before AI, and poetry that focuses on what some are calling the “polycrisis” that includes climate, health, economic inequity, and political upheaval.
Re-reading can also be pure joy. I just finished the lovely “Wintering” by Katherine May for the second time. And in an act of whimsy and, admittedly, procrastination, I like to pull a random book of my shelf and read page 56.
What are you re-reading?
– Shannon
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