About the Author
From Julian Barnes, at The Guardian: "If reading is one of the pleasures – and necessities – of youth, rereading is one of the pleasures – and necessities – of age. You know more, you understand both life and literature better, and you have the additional interest of checking your younger self against your older self. Occasionally I will reread a book in exactly the same copy as I first did decades previously: and there, in, say, a student text of a Flaubert novel, I will find all those annotations which now, initially, embarrass. … I don't think you are a more intelligent reader at 65 than at 25; just a more subtle one, and better able to make comparisons with other books and other writers."