A new book is a stranger. You are introduced, you exchange a few polite paragraphs, and then you decide whether to keep going. Sometimes a new book is exactly the stranger you needed. More often, it is a fine person you will not see again.

An old book — a book you have already read once or twice — is a friend who has been waiting. You know the voice before the first sentence ends. You know where it gets slow. You know which page will undo you, and you open the cover anyway.

The book did not change. You did. The sentence you glided past at twenty-five is the one that stops you cold at thirty-eight.

There is a small literature of guilt around rereading. People apologize for it, as if going back to a book you love is a failure of ambition. I used to feel the same way. I kept a list of the books I had not yet read, and I treated it as a debt. I have stopped doing this.

What I have found is that four or five books have, over the years, said more to me than the other two hundred combined. I reread them every few years. They are not always the same books, because I am not always the same reader. But the shelf is small, and the visits are deep.

If you are looking for a suggestion: pick one book you loved seven years ago and have not opened since. Give it a week. You will meet two people — the book, and the version of yourself that read it the first time. Both are worth saying hello to.