Rereading favorites a gift

Although there are countless new books to be explored, some bear rereading, which I did recently to great satisfaction and edification.

One I read aloud – just for fun – because that’s how Bailey White’s “Mama Makes Up Her Mind” comes most alive with characters and dialogue as fertile as the South Georgia soil from which they grew.

White is a natural storyteller, and I could listen to her imaginative tales over and over as if I were one of her adoring first-grade pupils seated in a circle at her feet.

The second book, I read more slowly and with concentration focused on the prose of Evelyn Waugh. I revisited “Brideshead Revisited,” a companion to the memorable Public Broadcasting System television series. And I relished descriptions such as this: “We dined in a room they called ‘the Painted Parlour.’ It was a spacious octagon, later in design than the rest of the house; its walls were adorned with wreathed medallions, and across its dome prim Pompeian figures stood in pastoral groups. They and the satin-wood and ormolu furniture, the carpet, the hanging bronze candelabrum, the mirrors and sconces, were all a single composition, the design of one illustrious hand. ‘We usually eat here when we’re alone,’ said Sebastian; ‘it’s so cosy.'”

So speaks the Englishman, and I’m reminded of Kazuo Ishiguro’s “The Remains of the Day,” another novel that delves into the core of history and the English mind. I have twice read that book for the sheer love of Ishiguro’s elegant writing.

My third reread was seas apart from White’s vignettes on Southern living or Waugh’s lively conversations between Oxford students on summer sabbatical.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s “Gift from the Sea” may not have the lilt of Bailey White nor the wit of Evelyn Waugh, but the simple wisdom Lindbergh imparts is as treasured as the seashells she collects during an island vacation.

In 1955 when the book was copyrighted, the lives of contemporary women were not as fragmented as now. Yet, Lindbergh wrote of the need for simplicity – and of solitude – to achieve serenity. In one segment, she spoke to the Moon Shell, with its circles winding inward to the tiny core: “You will remind me that I must try to be alone for part of each year, even a week or a few days; and for part of each day, even for an hour or a few minutes in order to keep my core, my center, my island-quality. … You will remind me that woman must be still as the axis of a wheel in the midst of her activities; that she must be the pioneer in achieving this stillness, not only for her own salvation, but for the salvation of family life, of society, perhaps even of our civilization.”

The last page of the book is the “gift” I received upon rereading. “When we start at the center of ourselves, we discover something worthwhile extending toward the periphery of the circle. We find again some of the joy in the now, some of the peace in the here, some of the love in me and thee which go to make up the kingdom of heaven on earth.”