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Journal — reading the cultural index
← Issues Vol. 2 · № 010
Aravien Journal

Re-reading.

On the books you have already read

September 2025 Mira Asai Founding editor

Two years into this project, we found ourselves doing the same thing from the beginning: going back. Not discovering, not filing away — returning. To the same Calvino paragraph, the same Sebald walk along the same English coast, the margin note one left in 2017 and no longer entirely recognised.

Re-reading is the defining act of a serious reader, and it is rarely theorised as such. The dominant frame of cultural criticism is the first encounter — the discovery, the intake. This issue examined the second and third and seventh encounters, and what changes with each.

The marginalia are the record. Where you marked something at twenty-three, and where you marked it at thirty-one, and whether the marks are in the same place.

Edited from London by Mira Asai, September 2025.
In this issue
  1. 01
    The re-reading route forthcoming Mira Asai · Founding editor
    Pathway Editorial pathway
  2. 02
    One region, in re-reading forthcoming Mira Asai · Field note
    Region Updated this issue
  3. 03
    Re-reading, in passing Mira Asai · From the editor
    Dispatch 5 min read
  4. 04
    A slow re-read on Calvino, Sebald The room · Group reading
    Reading room Resident readers
  5. 05
    the marginalia · thread The Editors · Cartography
    Field map Currents view
Editorial themes
  • Calvino
  • Sebald
  • the marginalia
— The citation page

Cites

  • Pathway Slow reading — re-reading as the pathway’s animating practice
    On the books one reads in fragments
  • Work The Magic Mountain — anchor work for the re-reading issue
    Thomas Mann · 1924 · Novel

Cited by

Nothing has cited this yet.

If you liked this, sit with —

The archive is long. Four contemporary rooms.