Retuning to the Conversation
The Book Dialogue: Returning to the Conversation
Sometimes a conversation pauses, not because there is nothing more to say, but because life has taken us somewhere else for a while. Sarah and I have been away from The Book Dialogue, although we have never really been away from books.
Sarah has been deeply immersed in her PhD thesis. I have been exploring Goethe’s Faust through my podcast series, Faust: Unravelling the Great Enigma. And together, as a family, we have been caring for our mother, Frances.
Frances is now settled in long-term care. She is happy, comfortable, and surrounded by excellent care. Knowing this has given us space to find our way back to some of the conversations that have always sustained us.
And through all of this, our reading never left us.
Rebecca and Sarah — returning to the conversation, surrounded by books, stories, and a shared love of reading.
Books have remained beside us. In quiet moments, in conversations over the telephone, in questions that followed us through the day, and in those wonderful occasions when one of us says to the other, “You have to read this.” That is why returning to The Book Dialogue feels less like starting again and more like picking up a conversation that was temporarily interrupted.
The Reading Journey
As we begin again, Sarah and I want to explore something larger than individual books. We want to talk about the reading journey. What is a reading journey? When does it begin?
Can we recognize the books that changed the direction of our reading? Why do some books disappear from memory while others remain with us for decades? And what happens when we return to a book years later and discover that, although the words have remained the same, we have changed? Our reading journeys are not simply lists of books we have finished. They are part of the stories of our lives.
There are books we read because someone placed them in our hands. Books we discovered by accident. Books we were not ready for the first time. Books that accompanied us through difficult seasons. Books that made us laugh. Books that challenged assumptions we did not even know we carried. And increasingly, there is another part of the story.
Reading in a Changing World
Technology is changing the way we encounter books. We read printed books and e-books. We listen to audiobooks. We discover writers through podcasts, blogs and online conversations. A quotation encountered somewhere on the internet can send us searching for a poem written centuries ago. Technology may change the doorway through which we enter a book, but the essential experience remains wonderfully human: one mind meeting another across distance and time.
We are curious about what this means for our own reading journeys. The question is no longer simply, “What are you reading?” It is also, “Where is your reading taking you?” That is the conversation we would like to continue through The Book Dialogue.
There will be books, of course. There will always be books. But there will also be conversations about memory, curiosity, discovery, technology, rereading, and the strange and wonderful paths that lead one book to another.
Most of all, there will be two sisters talking about something they have loved all their lives.
Reading.
We are delighted to be back.
Sarah & Rebecca
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