How To Build Seasonal Rereading Rituals

In early December yearly, I hearken to Circe by Madeline Miller. This ritual developed organically, like so many rituals do. I learn the e-book in print when it got here out in 2018, and I cherished it a lot that I learn it once more on audio that fall. Then, the next yr, I listened to it once more — once more, within the late fall, although I didn’t assume a lot of it on the time. I’ve listened to it each December since then, at first as a result of I discovered myself craving it, at all times at first of winter (or, as I prefer to name it, the Season of Light), and later as a result of it had turn into a significant a part of my yr. This yr’s reread is my sixth.

There are dozens of causes I really like studying Circe on the identical time yearly. It’s a novel about turning into — the work and mess and care it takes to turn into your self. Winter, for me, can also be a season of turning into. It’s a time of settling in and taking inventory, of deep reflection and contemplation. So a lot of turning into begins, for me, within the quiet stillness of winter. I’m not spiritual, however December is my most sacred month. Circe just isn’t my favourite novel, however it’s one among my most sacred ones. The e-book and the season go collectively in bizarre and mysterious methods I can’t essentially clarify. It’s deeply private. This rereading ritual is tied up in all the pieces I really like concerning the naked bushes and the approaching snow, the Season of Light, and the shortening days. It has to do with how I, particularly, transfer via the world. It has to do with what Circe means to me — the spells it ignites, the magic its phrases spark inside me.

Though I’ve at all times been a rereader, the facility of this annual reread has shocked me. It’s not simply one thing that I stay up for yearly. It’s one thing that grounds and energizes me. Circe is how I welcome winter. It has turn into a seasonal marker, a solution to honor and have a good time change. It’s satisfying (I actually love this e-book greater than I can say), but it surely’s additionally an anchor. Every yr, the e-book hits me in another way. Every yr, the e-book is acquainted. Sometimes, December rolls round, and I really feel largely in command of my little life. Sometimes December rolls round, and I’m within the midst of non-public turmoil, unmoored and misplaced. The world we reside in is so fraught, so heartbreaking, so exhausting. Rereading Circe within the first week of December is a welcome fixed — however a relentless that’s by no means the identical.

My annual reread of Circe has turn into such a treasured a part of my studying life that I’ve begun fascinated by seasonal rereading rituals extra broadly. What would it not really feel prefer to have a e-book like Circe for each season — a e-book to welcome spring, summer season, and fall? How may seasonal rereads enrich my life in different methods? I’ve began to think about a complete yr of rereads, a set of beloved phrases to information me via the yr. I do know these types of rituals take time to construct. There are solely so many books I wish to reread yearly — indefinitely. But there are such a lot of wealthy rewards in this type of deliberate, cyclical rereading. I’d prefer to slowly construct up my calendar of rereads, including new seasonal rituals annually.

In 2021, I learn Vivek Shraya’s great ode to alter and transformation, People Change, on January 1st. It’s a brief e-book — about 100 pages — and simple to learn in a day. It was the right solution to begin the brand new yr. In it, Shraya addresses why we’re so usually afraid of change and affords new methods to consider each change itself and the variations of ourselves we depart behind within the course of of adjusting. I didn’t reread it this yr, however I’ve been fascinated by it. I’m planning to reread it on January twenty fourth, 2024, to see the way it feels. This, I’ve discovered, is commonly how ritual-building goes: you consider one thing, you strive it out, you see the way it goes. Sometimes it sticks. If it doesn’t — you possibly can let it go.

I’m imagining a bookish yr through which I welcome spring with Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and summer season with Cantoras by Caro De Robertis and get myself via the hardest month (for me, July) with Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights. I’m imagining beginning The Sealey Challenge each August with The Trees Witness Everything by Victoria Chang. I’m imagining what it’d really feel prefer to learn Edinburgh by Alexander Chee each November.

I do know that not all of those imagined rereads of beloved books will stick. I could determine to learn People Change on the primary of January yearly and discover, three years later, that the ritual now not serves me. I’m not thinking about making a schedule of prescribed rereads that I drive myself to stick to. I’m thinking about listening deeply to seasonal shifts — in my physique and on this planet round me — and matching these shifts with books. I haven’t gotten bored with rereading Circe but, and I doubt I ever will, but when I do, I’ll gently lay that ritual down and discover a new one. The true magnificence and energy of seasonal rereading rituals is in the way in which they join me to my life and the lives of my human and nonhuman kin — previous, current, and future.