Re-reading great books

Am between books now so let me take a moment to offer a big shoutout to Ted Gioia who maintains a site with some extraordinary reviews and some of the best reading lists I've every come across (which I guess means our tastes largely agree): check out Ted's greatbooksguide.com to see what I mean. People often ask me for book suggestions, and I always have a few to offer, and have posted a few on this blog, under the key words lists or top 10 or "fiction in general." Ted has a terrific list of the 100 best novels - always subject for debate - and of the "new canon" (i.e., since 1985) and other lists. I find that just about everything on his list I either want to read or, more important, want to re-read: so many great books I've read and have totally lost, at least to recollection, though they have gone into forming how I think, how I read, and how I write. To be able to hold all that we've read in our conscious minds would be an amazing feat and gift - I suppose some great readers are able to do so. But most of us can't, and we should embrace the act of re-reading: coming back to great books a 2nd or 3rd time is a deepening and enriching experience, we approach literature differently as we grow, or at least as we age, finding new meanings and significance - sometimes when I come back to a great work it's as if I've never read it before, sometimes it is a recovery of an experience long lost. Thinking of one of my favorite passages from T.S. Eliot: we have had the experience, but missed the meaning, and approach to the meaning restores the experience, in a new form.