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Rereading The Sun Also Rises in July is like watching It's a Wonderful Life in December -- a worthy tradition. Too bad I don't do it. Every fifth to tenth July, is more like it.

But I found three clippings in my old copy (pictured). One was a newspaper photo of a drunk being tossed by a bull in the running of the bulls in Pamplona. The San Fermin Festival there is always around the Fourth of July and provides much more bang for your buck than a silly fireworks show. All you do is don white, wear a red sash about the waist and neck, and get wasted. Then run like hell ahead of the bulls and hope you don't wind up on an AP syndicate photo released to the world under the words "Advantage: Bull."

The other clippings: one was a list of notes I wrote for an on-line book group. Don't remember which one or where, actually, but it happened. The other was a recipe for Rum St. James I wrote down. Oddly, though Hem describes every manner of drink and meal he has in this book, Rum St. James isn't one of them. That was from A Moveable Feast, proof that I mixed Hemingway books as frequently as I mixed metaphors at one time.

As it is his second book (but first famous one), The Sun Also Rises is less self-parody than some of EH's other books. Some of that clipped speech and repetition stuff, learned from Gertrude Stein (ugh), yes, but not so bad. And of course EH's fascination with women who had short, boyish hair (in this case, Lady Brett Ashley). Anti-semitism? Boy, howdy.

Imagine reading this if you were actually on this trip (it's a roman à clef, so characters match real people). Especially if you were Robert Cohn. Ouch. But really, the whole lot of them come off badly. It's the scenery that wins best character award. Especially San Sebastian at the end, where Jake "baptizes" himself in the Atlantic by cleansing off the whole rotten mess that the fiesta created. Love those ten pages or so. As a reader, I needed a rebirth too.

Then, of course, the ending. A perfect finish. How many episodes in life can end with the words, "Isn't it pretty to think so?" Too many. It's so good I thought it might be in Ecclesiastes like the title, but no.

Anyway, it was a grand mood read and a great book to reread in Maine on vacation in the sun with the dry smell of pine needles and the sun glinting off the water so its reflection does that gold dance thing on the tree boughs above. You can take naps, too, letting your head rest against the old book with its yellow pages and signature smell of old paper and ink.

That smell is comfort food for readers, plain and simple -- a time machine to the first time you read a favorite book and thought you'd found the best friend you never had. What can I say. First-blush sentiments carry you away like that....