John Adams on our favorite Emma (sorry Miss Austen!):
In years past I had started the book numerous times but had given up, doubtless because I felt obliged to read it in French, and after fifty or so pages the effort dragged me down. In the last few weeks, though, I read it in full—in English, which I'm passably good at. And immediately upon finishing it, without even a pause to look around or take a deep breath, I began reading a second time. I can’t say that of any novel I’ve ever read—that I’ve wanted to go right back to page one and do it all over again. I now understand why Nabokov says you haven’t really read a book if you’ve just read it once.