Rereadings Seventeen writers revisit books they love

Is a book the same book--or a reader the same reader--the second time around? The seventeen authors in this witty and poignant collection of essays all agree on the answer: Never. The editor ofRereadingsis Anne Fadiman, and readers of her bestselling bookEx Libriswill find this volume especially satisfying. Her chosen authors include Sven Birkerts, Allegra Goodman, Vivian Gornick, Patricia Hampl, Phillip Lopate, and Luc Sante; the objects of their literary affections range fromPride and PrejudicetoSue Barton, Student Nurse. These essays are not conventional literary criticism; they are about relationships.Rereadingsreveals at least as much about the reader as about the book: each is a miniature memoir that focuses on that most interesting of topics, the protean nature of love. And as every bibliophile knows, no love is more life-changing than the love of a book.

Anne Fadiman is the Francis Writer in Residence at Yale University. She is the author of Ex Libris (FSG, 1998) and The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (FSG, 1997), recipient of a National Book Critics Circle Award. She and her family live in western Massachusetts

On Rereading: Forward by Anne Fadiman David Samuels, Marginal Notes on the Inner Lives of People with Cluttered Apartments in the East SeventiesFranny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger Patricia Hampl, Relics of Saint KatherineThe Journal, Letters, and Stories of Katherine Mansfield Sven Birkerts, Love's Wound, Love's SalvePan, by Knut Hamsun Vijay Seshadri, Whitman's Triumph"Song of Myself," by Walt Whitman Arthur Krystal, Kid Roberts and MeThe Leather Pushers, by H.C. Witwer Diana Kappel Smith, My Life with a Field GuideA Field Guide to Wildflowers of Northeastern and Northcentral North America, by Roger Tory Peterson and Margaret McKenny Luc Sante, A Companion of the ProphetArthur Rimbaud, by Enid Starkie Katherine Ashenburg, Three Doctors' DaughtersThe Sue Barton Books, by Helen Dore Boylston Jamie James, "You Shall Hear of Me"Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad  Vivian Gornick, Love with a Capital LThe Vagabond and The Shackle, by Colette Michael Upchurch, Stead Made Me Do ItHouse of All Nations, by Christina Stead Allegra Goodman, Pemberley PrevisitedPride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen Pico Iyer, Lawrence by Lightning The Virgin and the Gypsy, by D.H. Lawrence Barbara Sjoholm, The Ice Palace"The Snow Queen," by Hans Christian Andersen Evelyn Toynton, Revisiting BridesheadBrideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh Phillip Lopate, The Pursuit of WorldlinessThe Charterhouse of Parma, by Stendhal David Michaels, The Back of the AlbumSgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, by the Beatles About the ContributorsAcknowledgments