Books you read over and over (and over) again

I read a lot of my books over and over again, most recently it's been On The Road To Kandahar, We Were Soldiers Once......And Young, Marine Sniper: 93 Conformed kills, Silent Warrior, just to name a few.

 

I re-read a lot of books, maybe most of the books I like. I read extremely quickly, so I do a lot of reading. But the ones that stand out for me, that I come back to with real purpose, and intent, and re-read with thoughtfulness and serious attention...? Let's see....

I read Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales (Tolkien) at least once a year. I read the Dune books (the original six, anyway) once a year or so. Same with Alice In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass. The Sherlock Holmes canon, I go through maybe every other year. Most of Poe's ouevre. The Mabinogion. The Tain Bo Cuailnge. The Tao Te Ching. The Three Musketeers. Les Miserables. Moby-Dick. Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror and Other Stories. Gerard's Herball. Shakespeare's works (although I confess I have been known to skip The Winter's Tale and Troilus and Cressida, and occasionally Pericles Prince of Tyre and Timon of Athens as well; and I've never been a fan of "Venus and Adonis"). Dante's Inferno and Purgatorio (I don't care for Paradiso)-- I try to piece together a bit more of the Italian every year. The Middle English poem "Pearl" which is one of my all-time favorite works of literature, not so much for the theology of grief (which is less than compelling) than for the language, which is stunning. Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Eliot's The Waste Land and Other Poems, and Four Quartets and Other Poems. Barret Browning's Sonnets From The Portuguese. Ginsberg's "Howl" and "Kaddish." And most of the poetic work of John Donne, Robert Burns, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Dylan Thomas, and Yehudah Amichai.

...But perhaps I've said too much....

 

I've done the Dune series at least 3 times each. I've also worked most of my way through Herbert's son's prequels. So I admittedly like that body of work. I cut my early reading teeth on Foundation and have since tried to read Forward the Foundation (?) but gave up just last week. It didn't hold me interest the way the original books did back in the '70's.
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Grok...

 

I read Lord of the Rings in 4th grade and reread it every year until the movie came out. I haven't been motivated to reread since then.

I've reread Dune a few times, though the latter books drag a bit.

Very few stories hold my interest a second time.

 

"Thiz will kill you". By charles furcolowe

Sent from my HTC Evo using Tapatalk

 

i am a different variety of geek.

the books i've re-read lately include merleau-ponty's the visible and invisible, whitehead's lectures on the concept of nature, husserl's genetic phenomenology texts and some wittgenstein. geek shit, trust me.

as for fiction, i read richard brautigan's trout fishing in america again. i read it in high school. i think it had an impact on my young brain, but i didn't remember it being so. but i can see it now. peculiar, that.

j.g. ballard: atrocity exhibition
william s. burroughs: the ticket that exploded
john cage: silence
italo calvino: if on a winters night a traveler
georges perec: species of spaces, life: a user's manual
william h. gass: the tunnel

mostly, i can memorize things that i read and don't feel much need to read them again, and typically won't unless there's some reason. brautigan because i happened to find a copy in a used book store. most of the list of titles above because i've taught them (except life: a users manual and the tunnel)..the philo stuff because i'm interested in it and was, not long ago, working on something that turned into something else i'm still working on.

 

Stranger in a Strange Land. Think I've read this book about 10 times, and it get's better every time.
Just about any other Heinlein book.
The Cat in the Hat. Kids can't get enough of it.
All the Disk World novels.
The Incarnations of Immortality series.

 

Excellent point. I've read Goodnight Moon just about every night for the past 9 years.

 

good night to the old lady whispering "hush"....

 

I started to re-read The Fellowship of the Ring in the past day or two. It has been years since I really sat down and went through those, but I recalled more than enough to know what was missing or changed in the films when I first watched them.

 

Googled it and found it online: http://www.authorama.com/three-men-in-a-boat-1.html

might read it.

 

I just started reading The Lord of the Rings again. It's been a few years since my last complete read through.

 

I've read "Siddhartha" by Herman Hesse at least 5 times. It seems different and even better each time I reread it.
I liked "The Road Less Travelled" by Scott Peck too. Twice.

Any and All of Kurt Vonnegut's books - they are all too good to just pick one favorite. They too are more fun the second time!
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I forgot to mention Craig Fergusen's book/bio, "American By Choice". He is one wild child and crazy Scott!

 

LOVE BOOKS HAVE GONE BROKE PURCHASING BOOKS,,,

 

The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye - This is a magnificent romantic/historical/adventure novel set in India at the time of mutiny. "The Far Pavilions" is a story of 19th Century India, when the thin patina of English rule held down dangerously turbulent undercurrents. It is a story about an English man - Ashton Pelham-Martyn - brought up as a Hindu and his passionate, but dangerous love for an Indian princess. It is the story of divided loyalties, of friendship that endures till death, of high adventure and of the clash between East and West.

 

for me, rereading a book is akin to listening to an album or watching a movie i like over and over.

i've been through jordan's wheel of time series a few times now. love his flow. love donaldson's gap series. wish there was more of it. i'm 2 books into steven erickson's malazan series and i can already see that i will be returning to it many times. but the book that i have read the most times, so many times in fact that i've been through multiple copies, is ellis's american psycho. that book is flat out amazing in my not so humble opinion.
\m/

 

I've read Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy series multiple times - each time they make me laugh just as much as the first time i've read them.

I've also re-read the entire Riftwar Saga by Raymond E. Feist. Typical fantasy fare.

 

I've read the Riftwar Saga about three times now. I love that series. Sadly, the follow up books just don't live up to the original four.