Reread, then set it free…

I’ve been considering adding another Re word to the title of this blog. That word would be Rereading. It’s a thing that’s happening – it’s nearly twenty years since I started writing about books online and now I have a lot of books I have packed and unpacked in the last twelve months. I’ve given four boxes away (well okay, half of those were probably my husband’s history and current affairs tomes), and now I am keeping the ones I want to read again. And after a second reading, to make decisions. Keep as a friend? or liberate for someone else to enjoy?

So sometime last year, I reread The Orphan Gunner by Sara Knox, which has been sitting quietly on my bookshelf for over ten years.

I have just found my notes in an app on my iPad from 2023, and there I have written:

Oh my goodness, what a story. It is so beautifully manufactured, this tale. The care given to the grounding in technical details, the slang, the voices, the clothing and people and places and above all a cracking story and riveting characters.

I hear that Sara Knox is wrestling with another novel, which she says is big and brawling, with the working title, Very Minor Demons. Can’t wait to read it.
And this caused me to search my old blog and see if I had reviewed this astounding debut novel, as a I couldn’t remember doing so. If the Stella Prize had been around then, she’d have won it for sure.

I haven’t released the gunner, I will read it again some day. And there are more.

I’ve enjoyed digging back into my bookcase. I need to make notes more often though, I am out of the groove and rushing headlong into book after book. They’ve all been enjoyed, so it looks like I made good selections. Shirley by Ronnie Scott and The World Without Us by Mireille Juchau have been recently devoured in this hungry fashion. The World Without Us was exceptional and I will reread Burning In, her second novel, which I do not own and which I have completely forgotten.

And I found a book I will never give away – Divisadero, by Michael Ondaatje – and reread it for the third time. I am going to read the last section again now, there are things in there to write out again and keep, and read again.