In the third and final KYD No. 17 teaser, Kate Larsen illuminates the pleasures of rereading. 

At the start of each new year, I look back on all the books that I have read the year before. In 2013, it was a list that spanned a lifetime of reading, with books from all the decades of my life. More than ever, it was also a list full of books that I found myself returning to for a second (or third, or fourth) time.

It was a tough year of reading. A tough year for a lot of things, really. A year that began with grieving for a close friend’s lost child, which led to months of sleepless nights, when I was unable to concentrate on anything new. Instead of being in bed, I stalked my bookshelves up and down, looking for something to distract me, soothe me or send me back to sleep.

Like many of us, I have an ever-growing pile of books that I’ve yet to begin for the first time. I call it my reading ‘shelf of shame’. It’s a shelf of good intentions, of overexcited and impulse buys, of misguided gifts and dry, but useful, non-fiction that I feel like I should get around to at some stage. It’s full of the sort of books that get sidelined when something else jumps to the front of the queue by virtue of hype, zeitgeist or through some sort of professional obligation.

Want to read the rest? KYD No. 17 is available for purchase (print and online) on Thursday 17 April via our Shop. Subscribe to KYD and receive full access to our archives.