An ode to re-reading everything.
And I mean everything.
Do you mean every book you’ve ever read, Kate?
Yes, every book you’ve ever read.
It is amazing how a re-read shows that the story has changed. I have heard this from a lot of different readers. The books they loved as children, the books they loved as adolescents, the books they’ve loved as young-adults, the books of their early adulthood? All different because you’ve changed.
Well, you’re not the person who originally read the book anymore.
Things have changed. You may have gone back to school. You may have gotten married, or had a child. The country might’ve been taken over by a despot whose only concern is himself and how much money he can bilk out of his followers. You might have changed jobs.
I didn’t start this series out in a bid to change my mind about the classics that I’ve read, or about books that I enjoyed in the past.
But it has happened.
You’ve heard the Star Trek joke about not liking Shakespeare until you’ve heard it in the original Klingon?
I am not the person I was when I originally read these books. Fiction AND non-fiction. That means the lens through which I see them is different now. And my interpretation will be different now.
Case in point- I am re-reading the book Lock In by John Scalvi. Yes, that same John Scalvi. I started three books when I was on vacation. Lock In by John Scalvi, All Systems Red by Martha Wells (this is the books the Netflix show Murderbot was based on), and The Soul’s Guide to the AfterDeath by Gwenna Laithland. Lock In was the only book that was a re-read.
Back to the analogy-
I originally read this book when it first came out in 2015. And I remember liking it. It is a near future story about people who have had a disease (Haden) and are locked in. There has been a flurry of these books over the years, think The Butterfly and the Diving Bell, but this was the first one that I read that was was fictionalized. This book has robots that can be piloted by those who are locked in.
The United States has just passed a law that will seriously impact those who are locked in. By taking away their subsidies. These are everyday Americans who have been struck down by an illness that they didn’t want and didn’t ask for because it is expensive, baby. To care for all of those 5 million Americans who are locked in. And the government would rather you take the cure that no one has yet, than be on the dole.
Not that most of the Haden sufferers don’t have a job. From coding, to the FBI agent main character. But caring for a body is expensive and having a second life piloting the robots is expensive. The robots are also expensive. You have to care and feed for the body that you are not using and you have to maintain the robot and make sure it is charged. That is why most of them have jobs. And still the funding for their survival and medical care has been cut.
Sound familiar?
This was definitely not how I interpreted it when I first read it.
It is funny how times and circumstances and bullshit that those in power and those in power desperate to stay in power are pulling on us changes our perception. Isn’t it?
Re-reading this book about a pandemic that locked in 5 million Americans and 20 million people around the world? Well, those the Haden virus didn’t outright kill. That has been a mindfuck to this operating room nurse who worked in a hospital nearly every day through the real 2020 pandemic.
Of course the government tires of taking care of these disabled Americans. Have we learned nothing?
Eye roll.
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 