Quarantine and Re-Read

Beth is the proud sponsor of two little women and…
I just had the best two weeks of my COVID-quarantine nightmare. No, I didn’t magically find the one place on this cursed continent where the infection rate isn’t sky-rocketing. No, I didn’t come across a coveted COVID-less oasis. I was stuck at home, just like you. What made it the best?
I re-read all of The Bronze Horseman series by Paullina Simons. That’s way over 2000 pages of heartbreak and trauma and glorious woodworking for all the right reasons.
Stop the presses. I am eschewing all obligations and re-reading The Bronze Horseman. #SHURA @paullinasimons
— beth (@bethorne) July 1, 2020
But this post is not about that perfect historical romance trilogy that if you haven’t read you totally should. This is about something else altogether. This post is about giving you permission to wallow in one of the best reading experiences that bookworms with long to-be-read piles are ashamed of: the re-read.
I know all the excuses against the re-read. I don’t have time for it either. I have two books from Book of the Month that I haven’t finished. I’ve only gotten to three of the several anti-racist titles I vowed to read last month. Some of us still have jobs. If you’re like me, you’ve embarked on an ill-advised, impossible DIY project that will never get done. We all have stuff.
I’m all talk with re-reads too. Who has time? But they are usually my FAVORITE book experiences, so I should really make more time for them
— beth (@bethorne) July 4, 2020
But I know for sure that we also all have a book series that brings us inordinate amounts of joy. Something all-consuming. Something transcendent.
It’s so good and did I really let the backseat scene kill the whole thing for me all these years? Do we need to apologize for all the SUMMER GARDEN WOES we have been spewing since 2013?!? Standby for a final ruling on that …
— beth (@bethorne) July 13, 2020
My advice? Don’t worry about what you need to do or what else you need to read. If you know that something makes you feel good, makes you feel things … grab it off your shelf and wallow. You might even love it more than you did they first time. I did.
Excellent reread 5stars for pure fun ⭐️ ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
— beth (@bethorne) July 14, 2020
And seriously, if you have no idea who Shura is, forget the re-read … first-time read The Bronze Horseman.
Beth is the proud sponsor of two little women and a huge fan of fandom. She took 3 years of Latin in high school and now speaks fluent pretension, which fully explains her current preference for gay wizard regency novels. She will roll over for a giant book with a map in the front. She takes comic book recommendations every day but Wednesday and TV recommendations never (she knows what's good).