Reread your favorite book five years later. The words didn’t change. You did.

A book is half the reader, which is why the same pages deliver something different years later. What you notice depends on what you have lived through, so a rereading is really a measurement of the distance travelled since the first pass. The parts that seemed most important often shrink, and something you skimmed turns out to be the centre.

Go back to one you loved years ago and read it without consulting your memory of it. Mark what strikes you now. The gap between the two readings is a fairly precise record of the change.