Returning to a book you’ve read many times can feel like drinks with an old friend.There’s a welcomefamiliarity — but also sometimes a slight suspicion that time has changedyou both, and thus the relationship. But books don’t change,people do.And that’s whatmakes the act of rereading so rich and transformative.

The beauty of rereading lies in the idea that our bond with the work is based on ourpresent mental register. It’s true, the older I get, the more I feel time has wings. But withreading, it’s all about the present. It’s about the now and what one contributes to the now,because reading is a give and take between author and reader. Each has to pull their ownweight.

There are three books I reread annually The first, which I take to reading every spring isEmest Hemningway’s A Moveable Feast. Published in 1964, it’s his classic memoir of 1920s Paris.The language is almost intoxicating (令人陶醉的)，an aging writer looking back on an ambitiousyet simpler time. Another is Annie Dillard’s Holy the Firm, her poetic 1975 ramble (随笔)about everything and nothing. The third book is Julio Cortazar’s Save Twilight: SelectedPoems, because poetry. And because Cortazar.

While I tend to buy a lot of books, these three were given to me as gifs, which mightadd to the meaning I attach to them. But I imagine that, while money is indeed wonderful andnecessary, rereading an author’s work is the highest currency a reader can pay them. The bestbooks are the ones that open further as time passes. But remember, it’s you that has to growand read and reread in order to better understand your friends.