Books We Cannot Read Only Once

The fine fellows over at SfSignal ask the following question:

There are books we read once. There are books we re-read. And then there are the books that we wear out our copy because we devour it again and again. The books we have to buy a copy for ourselves immediately upon lending out our copy because we’re sure we will never see it again–or just want to make sure we have it on hand. What are some of these genre books for you? Why do you go back to them again and again?

My answer:

The primary purpose of nonfiction books is either to give us facts, give us insights based on facts, or to persuade or urge us into some course of action based on that insight. But the primary purpose of fiction is to slake the thirst we have for the magical waters which flow from worlds beyond the dry and bitter world of facts, to drink, to bathe, to be cleansed, to be refreshed, and to emerge shining from the baptism of the imagination to return to the dry wasteland of the factual world washed and prepared for battle. Science fiction and Fantasy form the deeper waters which carry us farther from the shore of this wasteland, and therefore provide deeper springs from which, through the imagination, to irrigate it.

Hence, those books which call a reader again and again to its wellsprings must be those which have particular power to restore what the factual world does not give him. By seeing what books never lose the power to refresh him, you can see what he most craves and yet which the world most fails to provide him.

Science Fiction is a refreshing drink when you look around at the world, and you see some bad and ancient institution, and you think: that will never change. It is also a shocking splash of cold water in the face when you look at some good we take for granted and think: that will never change.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.