There are a lot of people who will eagerly tell you their takes on how you should read books. I've heard them all. You should read only for pleasure or for moral improvement. You should read the classics and enjoy them or you should disregard the canon entirely.
Especially if you're part of the literary community, reading the hottest new release becomes like a second job. There are always books you just have to read and have an opinion on. The pressure to have read the right books can be so intense that people will lie about the books they have read.
Last year, apart from the reading I did for university, I didn't force myself to read anything. I read what I wanted: a few literary books, but mostly romances and re-reading books I had read before. And the entire year I felt a persistent guilt about it.
While I believe that pleasure reading should be pleasurable, I couldn't help but worry whether I was a real reader if I wasn't challenging myself. Shouldn't I be broadening my horizons, opening myself up to new ideas? A reader can supposedly only read around 4800 books in their lifetime. In the limited time we are given, isn't re-reading a waste of time? Was I reading the books I should be reading?
It wasn't a conscious decision, to drift towards re-reading. 2018 was a year of life changes for me and comfort reads were touchstones. There can be a deep sense of relief in re-reading books. Because you know the plot already, you are just spending time with the characters and the language.
But it's not just comfort you get when you return to 'comfort books'. When we re-read, the books act as a time capsule and we are simultaneously reading through the eyes of who were were when we first read them and the person we are now. One of my favourite books, Fangirl, follows the protagonist Cath starting university. When I first read it, I deeply empathised with Cath. But when I re-read Fangirl, lines that previously mirrored my feelings about life, didn't anymore.
I still found comfort in revisiting the book, but I realised that I had worked past many of the insecurities that plagued Cath. I had grown up a little more when I wasn't looking. Metaphors and ideas I hadn't paid much attention to before jumped out at me. In re-reading, I wasn't