A Year in Reading: Dan Kois

I think it’s not unusual for serious readers to revisit the books that were important to them when they were younger. From middle school through college I was voracious—I read everything I could get my hands on, pell-mell, digging any available book out of the pharmacy spinner rack or my older brother’s room. It was the 1980s, and the trade-paperback revolution hadn’t reached Wisconsin; options were thin on the ground. I remember sitting down in the s at any library I happened to find myself in, pulling out the first book I saw with an interesting title. (That’s how I discovered —, if you can imagine—whose work, revisited, has offered such rewards and frustrations that.) Some of those books have held up well upon adult rereading—a lot of mid-period , for example, like, remains hugely enjoyable. Some of those books have not, as I learned when I tried to convince my daughter to try ’s , which I loved as a tween—perhaps because, my daughter pointed out, many of its female characters are buxom bimbos.