This summer we’re launching an exciting new series—a feature called “Second Thoughts.” We’re inviting members, as well as NBCC award winners and finalists, to write us about books they’ve had reason to reassess over the years. And we hope you'll take the request personally.
We’d love to hear from you about a work that had a big impact on you long ago, and how it seemed when you re-encountered it later in life. You, no doubt, had changed. Had the book changed too? What was it like to revisit such a book after all you'd lived through since your first impressions?
We also want to hear about significant reconsiderations of books you’ve reviewed, and then had reason to change your opinion about. Did an author pull the wool over your eyes? Or did the scales later fall away, for some reason or another, to reveal a masterpiece you’d earlier missed?
We’re looking for responses of almost any length, but especially from 300 to 1,000 words, and we’ll post them here at Critical Mass in the months ahead for as long as they keep coming in. Everybody has second thoughts. Please tell us yours. Respond (ideally by July 13) to danielakst@gmail.com, where I will gather them up, dust them off, and send them out into the world.