Re-Reading: A Short Ode

I'm not the only one who re-reads obsessively! Gretchen Rubin does it, too!

Comfort Food For Your Mind.

Gretchen Rubin's blog, The Happiness Project, is not just fascinating but also useful--as opposed to my blog, which is just fascinating. (RIGHT?) Today she has a post about finding comfort food for your mind in the midst of stress and anxiety, which is not only a great idea, but might prevent people from EATING comfort food, since the whole point of comfort food is to relax your mind. Wouldn't be easier just to relax your mind without the food? Go straight to the source, as it were?

And also, you might get skinnier?

In the post, she mentions that Victorian literature or children's books are comfort food for the mind, for her, and that she often re-reads: "When I’m upset, I want the comfort of knowing that I’ll love the book and that I won’t be upset by some unexpected plot twist."

AMEN, SISTER. I admit in full view of Blog and Everyone that I am an obsessive re-reader, re-watcher, and re-player, often to the detriment of those around me. The "repeat song" option on iTunes was invented for people like me--before its arrival I had to Alt-Tab over to my mp3 player and actually hit the "<<" button every time I heard the song coming to an end, which was imprecise and broke my concentration. I once sat, writing, in my then-boyfriend's single dorm (hi, SP!) and played the same Metallica song over and over and over again, until he finally rose up and closed the mp3 player.

People arriving in my apartment often comment on the number of books I have--a lot--and I've read some decluttering articles about how books are a source of clutter, and every right-thinking person should cull their collections occasionally. That's a Palin-load of nonsense. Not only does Freakonomics' Stephen Levitt back me up--a high concentration of books in a home has been linked to higher grades, and heavy library visits don't have the same effect--but a big source of happiness for me is to have my own private library of favorite books that I can read over and over, twice in a day, three times in a day, maybe as little as once a month. Re-reading is the bomb.