Warms You Twice

At left, Lou and my new woodpile.

Wood you cut yourself warms you twice. Mine warms me a dozen times as I cut, split, haul, stack, cut for the stove, re-stack, haul into the house, burn.

I get good mileage out of a couple cords of effort.

I'm thinking tonight of stories we love to read again. These warm me multiple times as well.

I'm a sucker for The Big Sleep, 1984, The Once and Future King, and Hemingway's short stories.

I've read The Hitchhiker's Guide about a dozen times, too. I guess that counts.

I'm wondering what it is about these sorts of works that makes us want to read them again? Sometimes, the language becomes a bit of a pain (T.H White's doesn't stand close examination).

Nevertheless, like a fire we've created for ourselves, old saws we continue to re-read provide a type of comfort from where we were in life when we first read them, or what they meant to someone close to us who influenced our tastes even as those tastes have evolved over the years.

My desert island library might be different because I'd want to talk the things I haven't finished or never started. The Brother's Karamazov, Commentaries on the Punic Wars, The Satanic Verses, The Hours, the Rabbit novels.

I hope you're reading something you are enjoying on the bedside table right now.

I hope you'll share your twice-warming list with me as well.

I've got some stacking to do...