You see, if you read a book again on purpose, that's fine: it means you remember it, and want to experience it again. And reading a new book is obviously normal. But thinking it's new to you when it isn't - that's not a good experience.
So I re-read Patience yesterday (as I write this). It was the 2016 graphic novel from Daniel Clowes, and is still his most recent book. I read it for the first time in 2017, and let me take a second to re-read what I wrote about it then.
<pause>
OK, I agree with all of that. Clearly I didn't remember it deeply, and I trusted my Books Wanted list more than I should have, but it's a solid Clowes story, very much in his usual style and manner. For all of Clowes's characters' histrionics, I find I don't really engage emotionally with them: they are very emotional people who Clowes often seems to be examining like a scientist with a bug.
That may be one reason why I don't remember Clowes stories viscerally: they're all distanced to begin with. The Clowes affect subliminally says "these people are damaged and wrong in various ways; pay attention to them but don't care about them." I doubt Clowes intends this affect for Patience, but it's so ingrained into how I read his work, so tied to his art style and method of viewing characters, that he'd need to change a lot to break that habit. And I suspect I'm not alone in this.
Anyway, Patience is a good Clowes book that didn't impress itself strongly in my memory. Everything I said in my old post is still how I'd characterize it as a story. I have no new insights to impart. Come back tomorrow; with luck, I'll have a read a book for the first time and have something interesting to say about it.
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