I’m turning thirty this month. Birthdays put me in a reflective mood, and the beginning of this decade sees me reflecting on what I read and re-read most in my twenties. Re-reading not only invites us to consider a text more deeply, it also invites us to see with the fresh eyes of our changing selves.
Often I use this space to promote a book that’s overlooked. The “test of time” is not the best or truest test for old books, after all. Yet, I love the same popular books most people do. They’re often the books I re-read the most. I’m struck by how predictable my favorite passages are, most on a single theme. Many of them are aspirational. Some reflect my lived experience. Others simply tell the truth about the world.
Here’s what stayed with me through college, divinity school, marriage, and moving (too many times!). The list I keep of books I read is as good as any diary: I first read Surprised by Joy while going up Headington Hill in a bus in Oxford; when I think of Revelations of Divine Love I am transported to dewy summer mornings, the gold light of the rising sun glimmering on green grass; Up a Road Slowly will always remind me of reading outdoors into the gloaming.
With quotations only, here are the books I re-read most in the past decade of my life.1
Revelations of Divine Love, Julian of Norwich
“Truth sees God, and wisdom contemplates God, and from these two comes the third, which is a holy, marvellous delight in God, which is love. Where truth and wisdom truly are, there is love, truly coming from both, and all of God’s making.” (97)
“Mercy works—protecting, tolerating, reviving, and healing, and all through the tenderness of love; and grace works: raising, rewarding, and endlessly exceeding what our love and our efforts deserve, distributing far and wide and displaying the high and abundant largesse of God’s royal lordship through his marvellous courtesy.” (103)
“Do you want to know your Lord’s meaning in this? Be well aware: love was his meaning. Who showed you this? Love. What did he show you? Love. Why did he show it? For love. Hold fast to this, and you and understand more of the same; but you will never understand nor know anything else from this for all eternity.” (164)
The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
“Leaf and branch, water and stone: they have the hue and beauty of all these things under the twilight of Lórien that we love; for we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, 361)
“‘For myself,’ said Faramir, ‘I would see the White Tree in flower again in the courts of the kings, and the Silver Crown return, and Minas Tirith in peace: Minas Anor again as full of old, full of light, high and fair, beautiful as a queen among other queens: not a mistress of many slaves, nay, not even a kind mistress of willing slaves. War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend: the city of the Men of Númenor; and I would have her loved for her memory, her ancientry, her beauty, and her present wisdom. Not feared, save as men may fear the dignity of a man, old and wise.’” (The Two Towers, 656)
“For it is said in old lore: The hands of the king are the hands of a healer. And so the rightful king could ever be known.” (The Return of the King, 842)
“Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.” (The Return of the King, 861)
The Anne of Green Gables series, L. M. Montgomery
“‘Dear old world,’ she murmured, ‘you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.’” (Anne of Green Gables)
“The little things of life, sweet and excellent in their place, must not be the things lived for; the highest must be sought and followed; the life of heaven must be begun here on earth.” (Anne of the Island)
“Every lovely thing heard or seen gave him a deep, subtle, inner joy that irradiated his life.” (Anne’s House of Dreams)
In This House of Brede, Rumer Godden
“When you have become God’s in the measure He wants, He, Himself, will know how to bestow you on others.”
“‘It was splendid,’ said Dame Perpetua in the Abbess’s room. ‘You made it splendid.’ ‘It wasn’t I,’ said Abbess Catherine. ‘It is splendid. That is the blessing of the liturgy, it wipes out self.’”
“Nowadays there’s a tendency to make everything utilitarian—even the things of the spirit. Beware of this. That wasn’t the way of the saints. They didn’t set out to be of use.”
“Isn’t that what you came for? To give yourself away?...A little thing, thought Philippa, but the greatest anyone can give: yourself.”
Up a Road Slowly, Irene Hunt
“I found lines that mirrored an ache and longing I had so often felt when the beauty around my woods cathedral was too intense, when the need to grasp and keep loveliness left me with a sense of desolate frustration.” (53)
“I was especially perceptive to all things beautiful that morning—raspberries in blue china bowls were enough to make the heart sing.” (149)
Gone-Away Lake and Return to Gone-Away, Elizabeth Enright
“When we found this nice green swamp, these nice green millions of reeds instead, why, they were so much better than the mud that we thought it was all just beautiful. And it is beautiful in an odd way, but you have to learn how to see it.” (Gone-Away Lake, 56-57)
“Gradually people began to speak of the place as Amberside, though there were a few diehards who never stopped calling it Villa Caprice, or, as in the case of Eli Scaynes, the Villa Cay-priss. But Julian and Joe and Tom and Lucy and Davey never called it anything but ‘the Blake’s house’; and Portia and Foster never called it anything but ‘home.’ All their lives they knew that one of the best things that ever happened to them was to be able to call it that.” (Return to Gone-Away, 211-212)
Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell
“I daresay it seems foolish; perhaps all our earthly trials will appear foolish to us after a while; perhaps they seem so now to angels. But we are ourselves, you know, and this is now, not some time to come, a long, long way off. And we are not angels, to be comforted by seeing the ends for which everything is sent.” (134-135)
“She felt that he did her good, she did not know why or how; but after a talk with him, she always fancied that she had got the clue to goodness and peace, whatever befell.” (136)
Surprised by Joy and Till We Have Faces, C. S. Lewis
“The second glimpse [of Joy] came through Squirrel Nutkin….It troubled me with what I can only describe as the Idea of Autumn. It sounds fantastic to say that one can be enamored of a season, but that is something like what happened; and, as before, the experience was one of intense desire. And one went back to the book, not to gratify the desire (that was impossible—how can one possess Autumn?) but to reawake it.” (Surprised by Joy, 16-17)
“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing—to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from—my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.” (Till We Have Faces)
Hannah Coulter, Wendell Berry
“Love in this world doesn’t come out of thin air. It is not something thought up. Like ourselves, it grows out of the ground. It has a body and a place.” (88)
“This Virgie of mine, this newfound ‘Virge,’ is the last care of my life, and I know the ignorance I must cherish in him. I must care for him as I care for a wildflower or a singing bird, no terms, no expectations, as finally I care for Port William and the ones who have been here with me. I want to leave here openhanded, with only the ancient blessing, ‘Good-bye. My love to you all.’” (185)
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
“…the homeliest tasks get beautified if loving hands do them…”
“For with eyes made clear by many tears, and a heart softened by the tenderest sorrow, she recognized the beauty of her sister’s life—uneventful, unambitious, yet full of the genuine virtues which ‘smell sweet, and blossom in the dust’…”
The Painted Veil, W. Somerset Maugham
“Here was Beauty. She took it as the believer takes in his mouth the wafer which is God.” (97)
“I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.” (196)
Middlemarch, George Eliot
“It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self—never to be fully possessed by the glory we behold, never to have our consciousness rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought, the ardor of a passion, the energy of an action, but always to be scholarly and uninspired, ambitious and timid, scrupulous and dim-sighted.” (268)
“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive, for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on un-historic acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs.” (785)
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, Louise Erdrich
“Thus was her salvation composed of the very great and very small. The vast comfort of a God who comforted her in a language other than her own. The bread of life. The gold orange of washed carrots and the taste of salt.” (216)
“Every day, she carefully dusted and arranged the papers on his desk, including words from a long ago sermon she’d saved, scrawled lightly and fading, What is the whole of our existence but the sound of an appalling love?” (355)
This Beautiful Truth, Sarah Clarkson
“…the making of beauty is our gentle and holy defiance of the forces of disintegration and the powers of darkness.”
Persuasion, Jane Austen
“A submissive spirit might be patient, a strong understanding would supply resolution, but here was something more; here was that elasticity of mind, that disposition to be comforted, that power of turning readily from evil to good, and of finding employment which carried her out of herself, which was from nature alone. It was the choicest gift of Heaven; and Anne viewed her friend as one of those instances in which, by a merciful appointment, it seems designed to counterbalance almost every other want.”
Just for fun, here are three quotations on October:
“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.” (Anne of Green Gables)
“In October any wonderful unexpected thing could happen.” (The Witch of Blackbird Pond)
“I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, the air gold and so clean it quivers.” (Peace Like a River)
If you are so inclined, share with me the words you are cherishing this year.2 What books do you re-read the most?
Some of my copies have been lent to kindred spirits, meaning I could not provide page numbers for all the quotations (some books are in the public domain with searchable text online). I’ve listed books in descending order of how frequently I re-read them.
You are a doubly kindred spirit if you can name which book this title came from (hint: I quoted it here recently).
So many of these books are so dear to me, and I'm taking note of the ones I'm not familiar with! I'm not nearly as much of a rereader as I ought to be. Usually if I'm rereading something it's because it's been assigned by a book club. So I've read a LOT of things twice because of that 🤣 I have, however, read Brideshead Revisited like four times and it never gets old.
Two of the ones that stick with me most from that book are:
"Perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; vagabond-language scrawled on gate-posts and paving-stones along the weary road that others have tramped before us; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us."
"One can have no idea what the suffering may be, to be maimed as he is—no dignity, no power of will. No one is ever holy without suffering"
I share a lot of love for the same quotes as you:
The Faramir one, "I love only that which they defend", used to be a quote that my students had to identify on their Two Towers test 😂 but I love it so much! True masculinity there. And the "to find the place where all the beauty came from" has always pierced my heart. The "highly taught and yet not to enjoy" quote from Middlemarch has stuck with me too from when I first read it and of course the incomparable last words to that novel!
It's so lovely to find that a kindred spirit has been formed by so many of the words as I have ♥️
Happy Birthday, Melody! And such a milestone birthday! I love this idea for taking advantage of your contemplative birthday mood. I love your list and the quotes you shared. I want to add Revelations of Divine Love, In This House of Brede, and The Painted Veil to my re-read list, having just read them all for the first time recently. The Anne series, Wives and Daughters, Middlemarch, and Persuasion are some of my most re-read books too. Interesting that I've re-read Elizabeth Enright's Melendy series more often than the Gone-Away Lake series. I don't know why! Some of my other favorite re-reads are the Vittoria Cottage series by D.E. Stevenson, The Scent of Water and A City of Bells by Elizabeth Goudge, The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt, The Inimitable Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse, and probably others that are escaping my memory. I, too, aspire to be more of a re-reader.
Here's a quote from The Scent of Water as a birthday blessing: "She opened her window in the morning and saw a spider's web sparkling with light and was aware of miracle. Sitting in the conservatory with her sewing she knew suddenly that the sun was out behind the vine leaves and that she was enclosed within green-gold light as in a seashell. She dropped her sewing in her lap and was motionless for an hour while the light lay on her eyelids."