Do you ever find that you get to the bottom of a page of a book and can't recall anything of what you've just read?!

There are lots of reasons why this happens to me but this weekend I found that I was enjoying a book so much, I couldn't get enough of it and was thinking of all the other novels I could read by this author whom I'd just discovered!

I soon pulled myself together, reread the page and determined to remain in the moment before investigating what I might read next.

There have been so many fantastic books published lately and with the longlist for the Booker Prize recently revealed, that's another pile of new titles and authors to explore.

As a result I rarely make an opportunity to reread old favourites. However, the benefits of doing so were spelt out in an article in the Guardian this weekend when the reviewer wrote of revisiting Catch 22. Friends have also been telling me about the titles they've returned to for consolation, escape and enjoyment ('I Capture the Castle' by Dodie Smith was mentioned and prompted me immediately to look up those opening lines again). And there have been tv programmes which have inspired me to turn to familiar authors such as Ernest Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald, featured in Write Around the World with Richard E. Grant.

With the weather, and the world, so unpredictable at the moment, perhaps familiar, favourite reads are a tonic for the coming days and weeks?!

Thank you for reading.