On rereading and not reading

There are few things as pleasant as rereading. It is especially nice for someone like me with conveniently dismal powers of memory. I only ever retain the sense of a book; mostly remembering just the mood it left me with or the ways in which it excited my imagination. I invariably forget whodunit in a whodunit. I can pick up an old book absolutely secure in the knowledge that I will love it but really know little else. Also being somewhat pernickety about satisfying my mood cravings, with an old book I have a hole-in-one instead of having to suspiciously poke through the first chapters of several.
Which is why I was dismayed a while back to find that somehow a sense of guilt had begun to creep in at the idea of rereading. I examined the matter and I put forth to you my findings.
On an almost daily level I am faced with fresh evidence of some extraordinary new talent or the other. Publishing is now more aggressive a business than ever before. Books get talked about, styles get dissected, new genres get heralded, and so much so that even a reasonably insouciant reader gets primed like a 400 ft bore well motor. There is now a weekly must-read and the ever more common you-cannot-show-your face-in-society-without-having-read-this. Lists of ‘the most important writer of the century’ and ‘quite the most exciting talent we have had this decade’ are soon threatening to make it into a good sized book themselves.
Instead of igniting in me the thirst for evermore inspired literature all this is leaving me oddly defiant. Mostly because of that niggling guilt I mentioned before. Now every time I skim for an old favourite, visions of all the books I ought to be reading swim before my eyes. With so much new territory unexplored what careless stupidity to eddying around in old waters! It feels depressingly like a duty to constantly present myself with newer delights, like the over anxious parent who enrols her ward in all the latest summer camps.
I find myself completely idle for a few minutes and any number of books from the current-books shelf insinuate themselves onto my attention. It has begun to make me feel unaccustomedly resentful. I have only known having to steal time away for books, never from them! Instead of the comfortable old friend they are supposed to be books now are glitzy new acquaintances you meet at cocktail parties to be talked to suavely and have to be painstakingly kept in touch with. To me somehow this is more effort than I like. It seems to dilute the intimacy and the one-on-oneness of a reading experience. It’s no longer just a book and me. With previews, book-launches, celebrity-quoting blurbs, reviews and a zillion bytes of opinion and information it feels like I have a whole community peeping over my shoulder. It’s extraordinarily hard nowadays to approach any book with a mind innocent of some manner of prejudice.
As a consequence, natural perversity is keeping me from fully enjoying anything new, and stupidly misplaced guilt wont let me reread in peace. Even staring into space, my all-time favourite pass-time has lost its charm under the stress of awareness.
When all this began I thought it was a passing phase, now I am a little worried. I am thoroughly irritated with myself for letting external factors interfere with my personal pleasure. And of course I know that loss of innocence and resulting guilt are never anybody else’s fault. The first may not be easily remedied, but I am damned if I don’t work on the second.