I revisited my old favourite books

I genuinely don’t know how this idea came to me. I think it came to be after I got the urge to re-read some of my old favourite books after I just started thinking about the concept of favourite books in general. I’m not really the type of person who easily re-consumes media, with books especially, it’s very seldom that I’ll come back to one, even one that I loved. The media that I revisit the most is video games, I just find with things like books and shows, since there are so many, it’s so easy to just move onto a new one, because the barrier is much lower, or cheaper. Like, I’m more likely to warrant spending £10 on a new book, as opposed to £50+ on a new game, so I’ll hop from book to book. But after thinking about books, and favourite books specifically, I started thinking about books that I would have considered to be my favourite at one point, and then I just wanted to re-read them to see what I think about them now. I will also say that I was worrying that I’ll be getting in the way of new books I want to read, but then one of my friends suggested that we start a little book club between us, and no one offered to suggest the first book, so I took the opportunity to suggest one of my old favourites so then I had the perfect excuse to read one of them without feeling bad for letting my tbr grow (that’s currently sat at 12 – on my record player – as I write this sentence.)

The first of the books I revisited was They Both Die at the End (TBDATE) by Adam Silvera. That was the book I suggested for mine and my friends little book club. It was between this or another one, but I figured since the book blew up on BookTok then it would be more accessible than the other. I remember TBDATE being my favourite book for the longest of time, like prior to university and then all through university as well, even one point during one of my MA classes where we were asked to bring in, I think it was, a favourite book, and I brought this. I remember people bringing in these literary or high fantasy, and then there was me with my YA book.

But for the briefest of introductions to the book. It follows Mateo and Rufus as they spend their final day living together as they live in a world where this service, Death-Cast, exists to call people between midnight and 3am on the day they’re going to die. You follow the two of them living as best they can before they inevitably die.

So, I have this really fun thing that happens where I will consume a piece of media, know that I enjoyed it and how much I enjoyed it, but then if someone were to ask me what happened in it, I would remember maybe five percent of it, if that. I definitely remembered certain plot beats, and things that Mateo and Rufus did throughout the book – I think I have re-read this book at least once before writing this – so I have patchy memories of it, and I did also remember how it ends. I know that’s a dumb thing to say since the title spoils the ending, but you know what I mean. What actually happens in the end, the how. Re-reading it was a re-experience that got to fill in those blanks of things that I didn’t remember. In all of those bits that I never remember, most of them came in the form of all the minor characters you saw maybe a chapter or two of. The ones that you often just saw in passing while Mateo and Rufus were doing something else, like two girls that pass the boys on the train after Mateo buys a blind date with a book but just leaves it on a bench for someone else to find, or even the guy who decides to blow up a gym. Completely forgot about that part. I’m also not a very perceptive reader. I’m that type of person who likes to switch off when I read and just experience whatever the book presents to me, so imagine my reaction, knowing the ending, seeing things in both Mateo and Rufus’ first chapters that alluded to the ending as well. I think this is one of those things I love about media. Once you’ve experienced it once, you can look back on it and see things that the author or creator placed that meant nothing to you in the beginning that end up being either spoilers or hints about things coming up. And the thing that gagged me re-reading this was seeing how Rufus literally says how Mateo ends up dying, and I think that’s just rotted. Adam Silvera literally tells you they both die, and then he also literally tells you how one of them is going to die in the first chapter. Prison!

The whole book spends the time with both the characters more or less having a, Well I’m going to die so I might as well, kind of attitude, which makes sense for the both of them. But one thing I appreciated still was Mateo, prior to finding out he was going to die, was almost a shut in. That anxiety he had for the outside world still stayed with him, even as he was living out his last day with Rufus, like when he made Rufus walk instead of taking his bike at one point, but it was that being with Rufus that pulled him out. And the same with Rufus, inversely almost, it was Mateo that brought out his more introspective side to the forefront. Not that it wasn’t there, he just became more expressive, I feel, or at least he let himself open up to the parts that were already there.

I do also think that reading it now, a few years later after it has been dethroned as my favourite book (mind you, both this and the other one I’ll be talking about are still some of my favourites), it doesn’t make me as sad as it did the first couple of times that I read it. Obviously it’s still a heartbreaking story of asking what you would do with your last day if you knew you were going to die, but having experienced it, and knowing how both boys meet their ends, it still does hurt, especially since they get a whole 360 pages (in my copy at least) you know they at least got to live out that last day. This book still has a lot of emotion in it for me, and I still do love it. I do think it was very strange witnessing it blow up and become so massively popular that it became a series because of TikTok. It was one of those moments where I just sat there like, Why is everyone in my house?, when I had already loved this book for years. But at the same time, I am glad that more people have had the chance to experience it.

So, the other book I wanted to talk about for this post was The Vast Fields of Ordinary by Nick Burd. I genuinely do not remember the last time I even touched this book. This is one of the books was one of the very first queer books I ever read. Prior to the idea of this post, I couldn’t even remember whether this book was good or not, just that it was laden with nostalgia for me, and whatever was in the book, it had a soft spot from me just because of what it was. And as I went on reading it, I very much felt the same feelings. I went on thinking, Oh yes, that’s what it was that made me feel. I went through an era calling books with little plot things just happen books. I still stand by this for this book. It’s literally just how Dade spends his last summer at home, between graduating senior year and moving to Michigan from Iowa for university. So, really, it’s a coming-of-age book more than anything, especially since there’s no real plot.

This book was originally released in 2009, and the first couple times I read it, I never really thought about that. But coming back to it, oh boy did I realise it was. I was absolutely hashtag realising. There are a bunch of things throughout the book that absolutely scream of the time. And I know there’ll be loads of books I’ve read in the past few years that’ll do the same for now. The main character, Dade, has a mobile phone, but it certainly wasn’t a smartphone – and there’s one point where a character gets a new phone, and characters are gagged that it can play MP3s. They also have the internet, but it’s capital I internet. Like it’s the big scary Internet. Leading on from the big scary Internet and this being in 2009, I forgot that Dade sucked sometimes. I say that kindly, because when I went to log this on Goodreads, one of the top reviews was complaining about how much of an arsehole Dade was. That first made me think that not all main characters should be perfectly likeable, like it’s okay for them to be flawed, they’re human that way. But then also about so many people think that a flawed main character makes them bad. And… that’s not true, Mimi. But still, how this links to 2009 (because it does!): Dade was gay and lived in a small town in Iowa in 2009. Of course he’s going to be a bit of an arse. If this book was released today, even if he was still in the same setting, he’d have the internet and a smartphone, so he could at least have the chance to find queer community online, and that space online, or even link with other queers in his area online. But like the best he could do would be maybe find an internet chat room and hope someone is from his town. Homeboy is trapped and gets called slurs on the regular. It’s obvious he’s going to have this prickly edge to him. I’d be surprised if he didn’t have it.

Staying on the 2009 track, there was one bit that stuck out to me that I couldn’t really tell whether it’s just something that was of the time, or just internalised homophobia that made its way into one of the characters. Alex, Dade’s love interest, comments that he liked that Dade was still guyish, and not effeminate. But he specifically uses the f-slur to refer to feminine men, and that’s what got me when I say I couldn’t tell whether it was just something of the time, or if it was a conscious choice to have Alex be a little internally homophobic. I think it would have been different had he just said that he wasn’t attracted to feminine men, because that’s fine, the issue was specifically that he referred to feminine men by the f-slur, and suggesting he wouldn’t do so for a non-feminine guy. That was just one isolated incident in the book, though.

I also forgot how abrupt the ending was. I’m fine spoiling this book, since it came out (as of me writing this) seventeen years ago. Dade and Alex don’t end up together in the end. There’re hints of Alex being worried of what’s going to happen between the two of them when Dade leaves for university, which, fair enough. I feel like long distance would have been much harder when communication wasn’t as easy as it is now, so it made sense for them not to. But with the way that it happens. After the whole book has been so slow in vibe – it feels like summer – all of a sudden it ends and there’s maybe one or two lines of Dade and Alex breaking up and then he’s whisked off to university in a final few-page long chapter where he’s suddenly thriving.

I’ll say, while I definitely still enjoyed the book, I loved recapturing the feelings it gave me, and I think I still enjoy what I enjoyed about it before, I definitely see flaws where I didn’t before. I still like it, but I don’t know whether if I read it now, that I would call it a favourite, despite it once being. A wild thing for me to say, and not something that would come from this idea I had to revisit old favourite books. I still love the book, and I’m definitely putting it back on my shelf, but I reckon I’ll see it differently from how I used.

I never really planned an outro for this, especially considering I started this post saying that I don’t remember how the idea came to me. But I’m glad I did this. I have a collection of books in my head that I had once called my favourite, but because of the reader I am (with twelve books currently on my TBR that I put aside for this), I never really thought I’d revisit them. I’m very glad that I did, even if it does make me see them differently. Call me the last track from Sophie Cates’ album SUPERNOVA with the way that I don’t see you (how I used to). It was a fun little experience for me, and I’d highly encourage you to revisit books that you’d previously called your favourites.