Rona Jaffe's THE BEST OF EVERYTHING has been adapted into a play in which most of the male roles are played by cardboard stand-ins. I'm on board with everything in the previous sentence, how about you?

It's a special day

I will have to take 2 hours off my reading today because "Mad Men" returns tonight! Don Draper, get on my television!

Source: Belle's Bookshelf

Read it again, for the first time.

The A.V. Club posted a call for the books people have most re-read as adults. My knee-jerk reaction was to start naming off the paperbacks I read over and over when I was young, before I noticed the phrase in the original question, "not counting books read in childhood" -- and honestly I don't know how books in my adulthood will ever catch up to those anyway.

I wish I had time to do more re-reading than I do. It's sort of like eating out: You eat at a restaurant, and it's really good -- the kind of place where you would like to be a regular and be friends with the waiters and everything, sort of a kitchen-away-from-home. But hey, look at that new cafe over there -- don't you want to know how it is? Maybe you'll like it better than your regular place! In the end, though, there are a limited amount of meals you can eat out a week even if you are a billionaire or Adam Richman of "Man vs. Food."

I find this metaphor appropriate because in writing reviews I sometimes think of not just reading the latest and greatest but, in a gut sense, of digesting them. (Definition 3, not 5.) I love getting through the stack of "What We're Reading This Summer" and being able to see the big picture; it's why I am generally obsessed with best-of-year lists, even the kind that come out in October and include books that aren't even out yet (ahem, PW). I have no regrets about this, but I have to balance some other stuff in order to keep current.

That said, here are a few books I find myself reading over and over again recently, maybe because I think they will make me wiser, but we'll see where that goes: 

• Margaret Atwood, LADY ORACLE
• Bill Bryson, THE LOST CONTINENT
• Gail Parent, SHEILA LEVINE IS DEAD AND LIVING IN NEW YORK
• Rona Jaffe, THE BEST OF EVERYTHING (although I haven't in at least a year; I guess it's that time again?)

A few twists on this question which I'm pocketing for future posts:

1. Adult books you read and re-read when you weren't quite old enough 
2. First books or book series you remember re-reading (beyond picture books) (again with the limitations)
3. Books you were forced to re-read in school
4. Books that fell apart on re-reading (a sad list)

Care to share your re-reads?

When You Say Wharton, You've Said It All

Or have you? THE AGE OF INNOCENCE and THE HOUSE OF MIRTH are just two of the books on Doree Shafrir's terrific list of favorite New York fiction. Our lists would overlap in a lot of places but I'm so happy to see THE BEST OF EVERYTHING on there as a choice I think is somewhat overlooked. And HARRIET THE SPY! A book I never really associated with New York City, but she did eat egg creams and own a dumbwaiter, so.