Reading habits are strange. I associate some pieces I have read with particular pieces of music (Howard's End and Barber's Adagio for Strings; the poetry of Walt Whitman and the music of Aaron Copland). Others I link to the color of the light from a certain lamp, or the smell of pines on the porch where I first opened the pages. Others I have no sensory associations for at all, and can't even remember when and where I read them. A very few books I associate with specific times of year. In the Fall, for many years, I would read Tam Lin by Pamela Dean. I remember finding this book, a 1992 paperback edition by Tor Books, at my undergraduate library's "friends of the library" sale at the beginning of October. The story coincidentally also takes place at a small liberal arts college, much of it in the Fall, so maybe being in the same atmosphere as the characters influenced how my outer world melded with the contents. I read the book so much the paper cover fell off. Then, one year, my annual re-read just wasn't the same--I didn't connect with the story the same way, or my interest started wandering. Eventually, I stopped, and finally gave my copy away--in a situation where the person receiving the book needed something that had also been a part of me. I rebought the same edition, but it isn't the same, and I haven't re-read it since. I'm not sure what about me needed that book so consistently at that time of the year for so many years, or what changed so that one day I didn't. I like the idea that there are books we need, and that our relationships with them change as we do, and that sometimes we can and should let them go.
by Beth DeBold
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