I accept that it takes time I possibly don’t have. I also know that there are many wonderful new books to read. I read those too, but they’re in a different category, and I think they use a slightly different part of my brain. They certainly live in a different part of my psyche. They’re more like first dates. Something wonderful might happen, but there’s an element of the unknown. Will we like each other? Will we possibly even love one another? But there is a time and a place for adventure. Like the morning. I particularly hate starting a new book just on my way to sleep. Those few gentle moments are not a time for a journey into the unknown. I want the embrace of the beloved familiar. I want to feel safe, loved and lulled. What if the book turned out to be especially dreadful? What if I were plunged into a knife-lined pit of bad writing? Or just a scratchy grey wool suit of dull, worthy writing? Ugh.

I have been known to part ways with books I merely like. Sometimes once is enough. The book gave me whatever it had to offer and I go forward, enriched but not attached. That’s fine. No hard feelings. Then there are others which demand to be read a second time, but then I’m done. Then there are those which I will reread and reread. And reread.

I’d do it, even if there weren’t a writerly justification, but there is. Rereading good books unveils their structure. The first time round it’s all magic, all the breathless rush of story. Later readings allow you to look for craft. Not that I’m always doing that, but let’s say I am. You can examine plot arcs, character development, description, tension, dialogue — so many things. Every beloved book is a course in good writing, if we’re willing to go back and read it again.

And again.

Back in the autumn, I wrote a review of it over at Young Adult Books Central which you can read here. Here’s an excerpt:

The Kneebone Boy, by Ellen Potter, lets you in on a secret too—on many secrets, really. Along the way, there are mechanical rats, hidden passages, a mighty dragon-slayer, Fluffernutter sandwiches, a deposed Sultan, missing relatives, a local legend and three resourceful, intelligent children—and all around and through the story, like a wisp of fog, slinks the sense that the world is a stranger, more mysterious place than the grown-ups would have us believe.

However, The Kneebone Boy also suggests that the world is far more normal than we might hope. No matter how strange or unbelievable an event, story or person seems to be (a five-legged cat, an imprisoned child-monster, a stuffed miniature zebra), sooner or later there is a logical(ish) explanation.

The book tells the story of the three Hardscrabble children who, having been sent to stay with an aunt by their distracted, artist father, instead find themselves lost and alone in London. They flee the city, landing at the miniature castle their American great-aunt is currently renting. Adventures ensue, much to their delight, because it is important, as Lucia points out, to have at least one big adventure before you turn fourteen and start to become dull and grown-up. Fourteen, as JM Barrie didn’t quite say, is the beginning of the end.

Also, check out the gorgeous cover. Look at that cat. Look at the number of toes on that cat. At the expression on the cat’s face. Tell me you don’t love that cat:

AAAAAAAND I have a lightly-used ARC to give away to one lucky commenter.

To enter:

1. Be a follower. (Or pretend to be. I’m not going to check. Honor system!) Then leave me a comment so I know you’re interested!
2. For a second entry, tweet or blog the contest.
3. Contest entries close at 12 midnight on Friday, 25 February

I’ll draw names in a highly scientific process on the weekend and post the results.

EDITED TO ADD: A long while ago (actually, almost exactly a year ago, eek! where does the time go?), I tried to run a little contest and then I lost track of it completely, so I’m going to pull that name at the same time as this one and so I’ll have two prizes to send off.

However, 2010 is still young, fresh and optimistic and this year I am going to be, if not more disciplined, at least more conscious of what I’m reading, in a zen kind of way.

To that end, I am joining The Story Siren‘s 2010 Debut Authors Challenge, which means I promise to read at least 12 — if not more — MG or YA books published in 2010 by debut (see how this works?) authors. In the next post, I will make a Plan. Or if not a Plan, at least a plan. If you might be interested in playing along — and if nothing else, know that you’d be supporting new writers and filling their days with rainbows and their nights with mariachi bands — then check out the Siren’s posts here and here.

But that is not all! No, because if I’m in for a penny, I might as well be in for a pound and I think I will actually occasionally mention what I’m reading and whether I like it and why. See, a little while ago on the Upstart Crow Blog, Chris Richman asked what we had most enjoyed reading in 2009 — and it would have been really convenient if I had ever made any record of what I’d read rather than trying to dredge it up from the polluted crevices of my memory, which grows ever more unreliable as I soak it in ginger wine and rum.

On the other hand, I believe — as I always have — that we are in some way the sum total of our experiences and those experiences include the books we read.* In that sense, I have never lost a book because it has embedded itself in some small part of who I am. I am the walking library of my life.

*Including some we wish we hadn’t. For instance, if I could carve out the bit of my brain that read Running With Scissors, I would.