The Aardvark Blog

The Gentle Pleasures of Re-Reading, Job Applications
23/07/2021

Opinions differ on the vexed question of whether it is ever a good idea to re-read books that you have previously enjoyed.

I don't necessarily mean the classics - I think most people accept that if you read Jane Austen for example at different ages you will have a different experience - but other lesser forms of fiction. Is it worth re-reading Dorothy L Sayers 'Gaudy Night' for example when you know exactly what is going to happen. And if it is never a good idea to re-read everyday literature should one purge one's house of books that one has read and enjoyed but judge not to be worthy of entry into the canon of great literature.

Well over the last week or so I have been re-reading some of the early and middle period Lindsey Davies Falco novels and I have to say that they are as good or better than I remember them. Yesterday I finished 'Time to Depart' - which is in my view her masterpiece - and I found it as fresh and interesting as when I first read it some 20 years ago. Sadly it also confirmed my feelings about her current series of Albia novels - the latest of which is marooned part read on my night stand. To be fair I have not just been tripping down memory lane as I have also continued to read Margaret Willes brilliant dual biography of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn ( a copy of whose most famous book sylva is stuck in my store awaiting a complicated repair), and a new book on the modernists in Hampstead - 'Circles and Squares' by Caroline Maclean. This brings to life the complicated creative and personal lives of an extraordinary array of people whose works we still read or look at. Characters include Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Walter Gropius, Moholy-Nagy, Henry Moore, Herbert Read and many more. Perhaps a little flat in style, the book is constantly fascinating and has taught me a great deal about a period that has always interested me.

So is it wrong to re-read books when there are so many great books that one is yet to read. I don't think so. Apart from anything else any comfort at the moment is appreciated.

Finally thank you for all those who have sent in your CVs for the job we have advertised. Applications will be open for another couple of weeks and we will start to look at them then. Needless to say we will let all candidates know.