Now, Read it Again

Pardon the typo... golma should read golmi, Heb. (before the beginning). Literally, unformed substance or, as sometimes translated, embryo.

Not a reread, but rather a slow and delicious communion: the hoary old War and Peace is an old friendship in process.

And since not too may people consider the "golma" of the Word these days, Philo of Alexandria didn't coin it, but he demonstrates in poetic meditation that before Christianity there was the Logos as Wisdom of the muse, word before the Word; indeed, before the beginning was the Logos.

I know. Philo is no JD Salinger.

Ho hum.

Sam Campbell, Asimov, Heinlein, James Harriot, Tolkien, Burroughs, Poe - Our home is nicknamed the Blake Library and Video Emporium by the neighbors because I just can't part with old friends!

I love the James Herriot books and have read them over and over and over though the years. I love the animals and he has such a fun way of describing the people, animals and that surrounded him.

I find it difficult to find new books to read these days that capture my imagination the way many have in the past, so I have numerous books that I keep returning to again and again whose enjoyment never diminishes. These include The Time Ships and Anti Ice by Stephen Baxter, Eon by Greg Bear, Footfall by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle, the Chung Kuo series by David Wingrove, The Last Gasp by Trevor Hoyle, pretty much anything by John Wyndham, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

Trilogy of the Rings.....every year for 30 years. Passion of the Western Minds, by Richard Tarnas, every couple of years or whenever I don't understand what our current President is trying to say.

East of Eden and the Grapes of Wrath every year - Silas Marner, The Jungle and The Little Prince every three or four years -
1984 before every presidential election. Guy de Maupassant's short stories are reread sporadically. A recent first time read - The Book Thief will definitely be revisited.

I think a shame that you did not include in this meta list or What to Read Now and Why, the most poignant story about the 9/11 horror, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer. This is a classic and should be recognized even if it occurred in this century.

Catch-22: I've reread it so many times practically all of it is underlined (some in vintage sparkly junior high colors), I still laugh out loud at all the jokes. Now I have a hankering to reread In Search of Lost Time, maybe I should give in.

Cry, the Beloved Country is a story whose quiet cadence convinces us of the "humanness" of us all. I was assigned to read it in 11th grade. I loved it. I reread it last year (at age 56). It is as stunning now as it was then. The poetry in human tragedy.

My most reread book is "On The Beach" by Nevil Shute. Not your typical post-apocalyptic yarn. The story would be utterly mundane were it not for that end-of-the-human-race thing hanging over the characters'???and the readers'???heads. It's a fantastical premise, yet one that hits uncomfortably close to home. We each of us face our own pending apocalypse. "On The Beach" invites us to ponder how we ought to occupy the time remaining to us.

Notable mentions: "The Fireman's Fair" by Josephine Humphreys, and John Steinbeck's "The Winter Of Our Discontent".

Actually, one of the books I regularly reread is David Gates' Preston Falls. It is an incredible novel of the Clinton years which still resonates for me in the Obama years. I often wonder about the main characters and how they would be dealing with 2009.