Do you ever find that there is a book from your childhood that you loved so much at the time you are afraid to ever read again in case it ruins the memory of the book?
Do you ever find a book can have the same nostalgia as a song? A feeling that you felt years ago and try to feel again by listening to the song hoping it might replicate the feeling but can’t and thus the song loses some of what you loved about it?
Do you ever miss a character in a book and then revisit them years later only to find that the empathy and pathos you had for them is gone? Do you ever find that looking at them through the eye of an adult makes you think “how cringey”? (I have a terrible problem here with childhood hero Jim Morrison saying/singing I am the lizard king, I can do anything”)
I find this with lots of books and music and memories. One of the most precious ones that I am 100% never going to read again for fear of losing the absolute brilliance of how I felt when I guzzled every word of it in school is A Separate Peace by John Knowles.
I can still remember the feeling of reading it, finishing and I have never looked at a branch of a tree without some part of me remembering this book.
A Separate Peace is set in the final years of World War II and is about two boys: Gene, and Phineas. According to Goodreads “Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete.” and their time in school together where one act of teenage fun changes the way their lives pan out. I don’t want to say any more other then, if you haven’t read it, then read it if you dare, or if you have kids then make sure they read it instead and hopefully it does to them what it still does to me: evoke the feeling forever of being young.
Other books I am afraid to read again…
- Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger
- Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
- Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer
- The Goonies by James Kahn
- The Wave by Todd Strasser
