I’ve had some very positive feedback on my forthcoming novel, Casual, in the past few weeks. Ivy Grimes compared it to 1984 and Brave New World. Then Lit Hub said it is “Up there with Atwood, Bradbury, Dick and Gibson.” These are books and authors that I have grown up with, that I respect immensely, and that I never dreamed of showing up in a review of my work. Besides making my heart flutter, these reviews made me want to go back and re-read some of my favorite books and look at them from a more mature perspective. I also wanted to see how they have influenced me.

I started with Atwood because — wow, Atwood. I skipped over The Handmaid’s Tale, though I may return to it, and sought out my favorite of her works: The MaddAddam Trilogy. I went online to revisit the plot and found I remembered almost nothing from the books. Knowing I loved the books and they were absolutely vital to my personal development, I was a little crushed. MaddAddam is a series I will point to when someone asks what shaped my ethics. But I wasn’t actually surprised that I remembered little of the plot.

Repetition Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

I am a repetitive reader (and watcher). My husband, who can’t stand to re-read or re-watch anything, thinks I’m insane. I’ve read The Garden of Eden by Ernest Hemingway at least a dozen times, and I used to read Of Mice and Men and/or Watership Down every fall. I’ve watched the entirety of Buffy the Vampire Slayer at least ten times. (And no, I don’t skip episodes.) This is mostly because I have an absolutely terrible memory. I can read a story — be immersed in it, discuss it, dissect themes etc. — and then the next month I will have forgotten most of what happens in the book. This doesn’t mean the book doesn’t impact me. But how I “consume” literature is in a very flame-like way. I digest it as much as possible until I break it down to scenes and ideas that almost become part of me on a cellular level. I adapt my worldview to fold in concepts from the book, but I couldn’t tell you what happens plot-wise.

Honestly, this is also how I experience people in real life, too. I have friends who have changed me, who I’ve experienced important, morality-shaping events with, and I know I love those individuals. I know they are important to me. I know we’ve gone through some shit together. But if you ask me for details about our shared past, I most likely couldn’t give them to you. Even when they try to jog my memory with “remember when we went… and did…”, I can rarely retrieve these details.

This might be a negative thing, and it might be laziness. It may also be partly how my brain functions and how I experience the world. Or it may be because I moved so much as a small child that I never learned how to build memories by having a solid, repetitive base to work from. Whatever the reason, it is something I have come to accept about myself. Even if I can change it, I’m not sure I would want to. Because this means that I absorb ideas and concepts in a very meaningful way and it also means I get to experience some of my favorite stories over and over again without getting bored.

Blocks to Repetition

Unfortunately, sometime in the past ten years, I’ve stopped repeating books. This is for two reasons:

• First, my reading time has gone way down. Having kids as a severe introvert has wrecked havoc on my ability to sit and read a book. I went from spending weeks at a time in my own world to sharing every waking moment with the brains of curious, developing kids. Although I’m starting to read again, there were years where I was so mentally and emotionally exhausted that any time I had for entertainment or consumption, I wanted to fill with passive, “easy” entertainment. This meant books took a backseat to television shows or casual online gaming.
• Second, I’ve been introduced to the wonderful world of indie books. This means that there are now an infinite number of books I want to read, and I almost feel bad going back to revisit a book I’ve already read when there is so much territory to explore. I feel like this is something I will have to come to terms with. I am not an explorer so much as an immigrant. I’ll never be the person who can tell you about every release this year. Instead, I fall deeply in love with a few books. Finally allowing myself that, I’m ready to start re-reading again.

Permission to Re-Engage

All of this is to say, I’ve given myself permission to re-engage with work I’ve loved, even if it means I may have to give up space for a new book. And I’m going to start by re-reading the MaddAddam trilogy and basking in some of Atwood’s brilliance over the next few months.