Reviews for Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love

The average rating for Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2007-10-04 00:00:00 Michelle Dees Tony Blair (thumbing through the contents): Hey, this one could be interesting. It's a series of essays about the delicate question of what it actually means to have read a book. Do you know what I mean? A talking donkey : Wow, Tony Blair! What are you doing in one of PB's reviews? Tony Blair: Er - haven't you seen the news lately? Don't donkeys watch TV any more? I'm supposed to be the middle east peace envoy and look at the place - look at it! (Tony turns tv on to news channel - blam! pow! Nato air strikes! Yemen! Syria! Palestine! Kerrrranng! Libya! Boom!) TB (shakes head wearily - some of his suntan falls off) : See what I mean? Donkey : Man, that looks rough. Okay, so you can chill here in a review for a while if you want. (Aside : Man, who else is gonna pop up here? Goran Hadzic?) A talking Badger (sotto voce) : Sorry, that reference is lost on me. Donkey : So anyway, Tony, you were saying? Tony Blair: Yes, well, you see you read books and they have this profound effect when you're young, and then what happens if you pluck up the nerve, you know, or get led down the primrose path of nostalgia, you know, and read the thing again when you're a grownup? Is it always a mistake? Is the thing you've been carrying in your head all these years really what's in the book? Or is it some weird construct that you yourself invented? Did you actually understand it when you were say 16 or 17? I mean, in my case, the answer's obviously yes, but for you it might be, well, you know, no. No offense and all. Donkey: None taken. I remember crying my eyes out when I read The Grapes of Wrath. I was just a foal. Maybe if I read it now it would seem like some purple-prose tub-thumping socialist diatribe in the guise of a tale of such Brobdingnagian sentimentality that would even turn Dickens green. Badger: And maybe not. Donkey: True, true. Maybe not. Did you have a book that particularly floated your boat in your youth? Badger: Well, we weren't big readers to be honest. We didn't have electricity. Tony Blair : No electricity? What, your parents were hippies? Badger : Nocturnal hunter-gatherers, really, more than hippies. But there was one book I remember… Donkey: Which one? Badger : It was called The Little Prince. Do you know it? Tony Blair: Oh yes! I read that! What a beautiful fable! Badger: I could practically recite it for you at one point. Er… "I know a planet where there is a certain red-faced gentleman. He had never smelled a flower. He has never looked at a star. He has never loved any one. He has never done anything in his life but add up figures." Tony Blair : Well well - I see now that this is a very prescient reference to Gordon Brown. I never noticed that when I was nine. Badger : Do you remember this one? "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world…" Tony Blair : Boo hoo! I remember! Boo hoo! (Tears are splashing down). Donkey : Sounds like a load of donkey bollocks to me. Tony Blair : Well you had to read it then! Not now, then! Donkey : Well probably. Although whether you're nine or ninety, woffly hello-trees hello-sky proto-new age vapourising wrapped up in a sticky coccoon of cosiness that would warm the very cockles of the hardest of hearts and let the sunshine in and flood barren lives with a sense of limitless possibility…. Sorry, I've completely lost the thread of that sentence… Tony Blair (trying to help) : Woffly, sticky coccoon…. Cockles… Donkey : Oh yes! I was going to say…. Is still to my mind a cuter but no less meretricious version of jam yesterday, jam tomorrow but no jam today. Badger : oh you're so cynical. This actually shocks me a little bit. Tony Blair : Well he might be right. Badger : oh and what do you know? Really, Mr Blair, do you know anything? Anything at all? Tony (dabbing his eyes, rueful smile back in place): Well, I know people seem to find it very easy to criticise everything I do and say… Donkey : well you make it so easy for them! Anyway, if you're going to stay in this review a bit longer, maybe you could tell us what George Bush was really like… did you really pray together? Did you? Did you really think God was telling you to invade Iraq? Go on, tell us, we won't breathe a word. No one would believe us anyway even if we did - he's a badger and I'm a donkey. Tony Blair : No no, I don't think I should. Let's play Charades instead. Badger and Donkey (both thinking: There goes a hundred grand from the Daily Mail) : Aw, c'mon....

Review # 2 was written on 2007-07-05 00:00:00 Harold Smith An interesting conceit: at the invitation of the editor, the wonderful Anne Fadiman, seventeen writers revisit books they had read in their youth and describe the results. Unfortunately, the results are mixed, at best. Perhaps one would need to have read all 17 books in question to derive full value from this book. But that seems a little much to expect. Overall, I think I was disappointed in how poorly some of the authors managed to convey the original passion they had felt for their particular choice. Predictably enough, the chapters that interested me most were those pertaining to books I had read, particularly those concerning books which had also spoken to me, upon first reading. My favorite chapter - the one about Salinger's "Franny and Zooey", an alltime favorite from my college years. I was relieved that it held up under the author's re-reading, and - when moved to read it again myself - that it did for me as well. It probably deserves more than 3 stars, but its overall spottiness prevents me from giving it 4. So let's leave it at 3.5 and take the opportunity to plug (yet again) Fadiman's far superior original collection of her own writing, "Ex Libris", in which there is not a single bad essay.