Read a book more than once

When you like a piece of music, you play it on repeat. If you discover a great restaurant, you come back with friends. But folks will read a book once, even one they love, and never pick it up again.

Some say life is too short to re-read books. As though your time on Earth is to maximize the novelty of your sense-data. If life is about anything (and this is debatable), it’s about making meaning from experiences, not merely collecting them. Life isn’t a shopping spree, it’s a creative workshop.

A book, like all art, is a statement declared at a moment in time. When you revisit a book, you get to experience how you’ve changed since the last time. To read a book more than once, is to re-read yourself. You are meditating.

Reading is not about feeding some words into your mind. It’s about noticing what the text gives rise to in you, and how. A book is the cheapest drug you’ll ever do, and the only one that gets more potent when you do it again.