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This was required reading the summer before I started college, a book that set the tone for most of my education to come for the next four-and-a-half years (I changed majors in there somewhere). I've read this maybe once or twice all the way through since graduating college (during which time I think I had to read it at least once more before graduating, this time for a Margaret Atwood-specific class). Each reading has brought me something new, I've read it with a new pair of eyes, with new experiences.

I've marked this copy up in different ways during each reading as well. In my first reading I marked sections, lines, paragraphs that dealt primarily with time and memory, as those are factors that are important to me. During another reading I found myself interested in references to faith and hope, and I made connections between hope and the previous interests of time and memory, how Offred's memories are a source of hope and faith. Later, control and power. And then connections back to hope and faith and further back to time and memory. All of these issues are connected, but it took me various readings to make all the connections.

Offred lived in gasps - whether it be smells or sights or sounds - and that's how I've read this book over the years. In gasps, even when sitting down and reading it in its entirety, so each time I sit down with it I walk away with something new.

It's funny going back now and seeing some of my marginalia, the way my handwriting has changed over the years, how my focus has changed over the years, how certain lines used to have left more of an impression on me, and how, now, maybe those lines don't mean as much but the one right after the one I previously underlined does. Maybe in another 10 years there will be another set of passages to underline, or a whole new set of pages that will bring me something new. In another 10 years I'll have a whole new set of experiences to give me a whole new set of eyes.

In the meantime, I'll continue reading the news and being terrified that each day Offred's story is becoming more and more familiar.