It is a truth universally acknowledged…

….that the public library is wonderful.

Now, please tell me you’ve read Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. If you haven’t, I enjoin you to open a new tab in your internet browser right now, go to your library’s website, log in, and request a copy. If you don’t have a library card/account already, sign up for one. My library system is doing virtual-only accounts, from which one can check out digital media (ebooks and audiobooks), as well as request hard copies of books for curbside pickup at the brick and mortar library. If your library has a similar option, you don’t even have to leave your house to start taking advantage of its resources. The local library costs no more than the taxes you already pay, so you might as well use it. I’m stripping all your excuses away, am I not? Seriously, signing up for a library card right now is absolutely a better life choice than reading the rest of my blog post right now. Do it. And then request Pride and Prejudice! (Or buy an inexpensive copy from amazon. You’ll probably want to read it more than once, anyway.)

I finally got myself a new library card since moving. Funny enough, I used to have an account with the same library system, since it’s the county public library, and we were in the same county (although on the opposite side of it, an hour away) when we lived in the Houston area 5+ years ago. But who knows where that card ended up, what with my periodic moving and purging of unneeded stuff. A new one, then!

The first book I checked out from my new account was an audiobook: the first audiobook I’ve listened to since I was a kid. Enough people suggested audiobooks to me, both for myself and for my kids, that I decided to finally try them out. I am hoping to put them to good use entertaining children on future road trips, since we are now an 8-12 hour drive from our most important family connections; I wanted to get familiar with the app and its use on my own before I needed it, though, and the library allows me to do it for free, so I might as well check out something for myself. But what title?

I asked Justin for a suggestion. I knew that, if left to myself, I would agonize over the perfect first audiobook to try, and never actually check one out until the day before some road trip, and then I would be frustrated with trying to download apps when I should be packing the car, or trying to figure out how the audio gets played over the car system from my phone, etc. I knew Justin would give me a narrower starting point, and I could pick something quickly and just do it. He did not disappoint me. He said, “You’ll have to pick something pretty popular for there to be audiobooks available at the library.” My mind went to new trendy books. But they might have a waitlist. He followed up with the single book suggestion of Pride and Prejudice. 

Um, yes, please! Perfect. The library has several audio copies available; I was able to download it right then and there; and I was set to go.

I’ve read P&P three times before. When I was a teenager, my mom gave me a beautiful, leather-bound, gilded-edged anthology of all Jane Austen’s novels, so I read a couple of them, including P&P, before college. I read it a second time, for a required class on my English degree track, sophomore year. Then I read it again, for a class entirely about Austen’s novels and their various film adaptations, my senior year. Between that class and my own pursuit of entertainment, I’ve also watched multiple film adaptations of P&P. Needless to say, I’m pretty familiar with the story. However, I haven’t actually read or watched any of the P&P adaptations since college, meaning it has been almost eight years since my last exposure. There are some plot points that stuck glowingly in my memory, and my notions of overall character judgments still remained, and Elizabeth Bennet always looks and sounds like Keira Knightley in my mind, but a lot of details had been forgotten. “Pregnancy brain” and “mom brain” have been melting away my mental capacity for a while now. So, I was excited to delve into the story once again. I remembered liking it each time before.

OH. MY.

Y’all, it was so delightful to revisit, and I daresay it was even better for the fourth time and in audiobook format, because, to borrow/support an argument from this book I read last year, when I listened to it read to me, all of my available brain capacity was left available to pay attention to word choice and to “painting the picture” in my mind; I wasn’t doing any of the “work” of the physical reading (decoding). Also, the narrator of the audiobook I checked out naturally had a British accent, lending authenticity to the story that I can’t manage without quite a bit of effort when I read silently to myself. It was utterly delightful.

To be more specific….

*spoiler alert*

While listening, I could pay close attention to specific words chosen to express the plot or a character’s feelings. Because I already knew the general “what”—I could better attend to and enjoy the “how” and “why.” And I got to know the characters better. I had general opinions of them already, of course, but I was able to pay such close attention to how a certain utterance of any one’s either affirmed or contradicted my preconceived view of him or her. It was also fun to shed the compiled view of the characters, which I’d collected subconsciously from all the movie/miniseries versions, and get back to the “real” characters in the text. For example, in one of the film versions, Lady Catherine de Bourgh is portrayed lightheartedly as an advocate of Mr. Darcy’s happiness, with only a stern facade to try to determine the truth of Elizabeth’s feelings and motives; in the book we get back to understanding her ladyship as pretty darn selfish and cold. I also had a false memory of Elizabeth’s change of feeling for Mr. Darcy being so sudden as to be almost as unbelievable to me as it was to Jane or Mr. Bennet. But upon this fourth visit to the story, and reading with a skepticism of my own prejudice here in mind, and with my mind free of the work of keeping track of “where the plots is going,” I could spend more of my mental energy analyzing Elizabeth’s actions, thoughts, and motivations, every time she’s included in dialogue. This time around, I felt every conflict of sentiment with her, and I came out the other end literally feeling the butterflies with her about being in love.

*end of spoilers*

In short, listening to the audiobook solidified my love for Pride and Prejudice, the original novel. It reinforced my conviction that Austen is a master of prose, of human character, and of wit; in other words, of believable and engaging storytelling. To elevate my language from before, I in fact admonish you to please read it at your earliest convenience, if you haven’t before. And, actually, even if you have read it before, give it another go! Maybe give it a try as an audiobook this time.

On a practical note, I mustn’t neglect to point out that I could listen to the audiobook through headphones without devoting the action of my body to reading. I love the smell and feel of a physical book in my hands as much as the next English major, but audiobooks do fill a niche, where I want to read more, but my to do list isn’t going to complete itself. Now I admit I’m no good at mentally multitasking, so I couldn’t follow the story while cooking from a recipe or interacting with my kids, but during mindless laundry folding or taking the toddler for a walk in the stroller, the audiobook was a welcome companion. Busy moms (or busy anybodies) out there, let me be one voice encouraging you to give this type of media a try!

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Justin and I recently watched all of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movies. Again, these are stories I’m fairly familiar with—I’ve read all the books, and seen all the movies before—but it had been a while. It was thoroughly enjoyable to take in the story again, knowing which main plot points were coming (and feeling less anxiety on behalf of Frodo and his friends, knowing all’s well that ends well, because of it), but being surprised and delighted (or appalled, I hate the part with the spider on the way into Mordor) anew by the details. Even though I knew the story, I couldn’t remember exactly how it all went, and I could hardly wait to see what would happen in between those plot points that I did remember clearly.

All of this to say: If there is a story you love, make time to spend time with it again. I usually prefer to read something new, rather than reread an old favorite; it seems like a “better use of my time” for some reason. I can probably count on my fingers the number of books I’ve read more than once by my own choice. But the P&P and LOTR experiences I’ve just described have changed my mind a little bit. When choosing books in the future, I may find myself combing my mental archives for something that I loved the first time, but it’s been a while, that perhaps it’s time to revisit. I did that with The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton–which for several years I considered “my favorite book”–a few years ago, and my overall perception of the main character completely changed. Probably because I was not 17 but 28: a little less romantic and idealistic, to put it concisely. I’ll be curious to find out how my favorite books change, when I’ve changed, when I reread them in another 10 years or so. Of course, I’ll still be reading more new books than “old” ones. How else can I find my new favorites? But certainly I’ll be sprinkling in more rereads, and more audiobooks, too, both new and old.

Tell me in the comments below: What’s your favorite “great story” (a book, movie, or series of either) that you could spend some time with again?