Books you read many times

Gabriel Garcia Marquez-'Love In The Time of Cholera'. Has become a sort of warm fuzzy blanket of a book for me, I've read it many times and loan it to any friends who have not. I'm actually on my fifth copy as a result!

Bruce

Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy

Got the books, the radio series (on tape - its in the loft otherwise I would have been able to solve JeremyD's "infuriating puzzle" fairly quickly) and the TV series (on DVD).

I don't know what Douglas Adams was on when he wrote this but it is the work of a deranged genius. He is sadly missed.

"Under The Frog" by Tíbor Fischer. Read it about once a year and every time it makes me cry with laughter and with sadness. A woman in IKEA asked me if I was alright when I was reading it in the queue, I was so creased up with laughter (it was the description of Patáki's plan for becoming the world's greatest poet that did it). I think she thought I was having a nervous breakdown.

Cheers,

Tim
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Os nid Campagnolo yw hi, dyw hi ddim yn werth ei marcho...

HHGTTG(Books and CDs no DVD yet) and 20,000 Leages Under the Sea.

Howard

Yes, the 4-part 'trilogy' of the 'Hitchikers...' has certainly got to rate; as does the 'Diary of Adrian Mole', and 'The Narnia Chronicles'. Admittedly none of these ever was in danger of critical literaly acclaim, but then again- like music- we are into listening/reading what pleases us, not what we are told to be pleased by. Which is why I never tried listening to an Oasis album from start to finish.

I can also remember being entirely captivated by the entire collective works of Enid Blyton, or the war-time escapades of William, the post-war escapades of 'Jennings', and the angst and tribulations of 'Billy Bunter'.

Ron
Dum spiro audio
Dum audio vivo

I always enjoy Orson Scott Card's 'Ender's Game' like it's the first time I read it, which was about 15 times ago.

An absolutely stunning book.

It's a Hugo and Nebula prize winner foor Science fiction.

Joe90

I read two books over and over again.

The first is "The Bridge on the River Kwai" about a English Colonel (played by Sir Allen Guiness in the film version - Academy Award winner for actor and best picture, as I recall) so bent on military discipline, a sense of duty, and pride that he builds for his Japanese captors a better bridge than they ever could have done themselves. The character development is superb, and one finds himself finally sympathizing with the wretched Colonel Saito by the end, all while the English Colonel falls into fanatical oblivion. This is a fairly short book (maybe 220 pages, I think) and worth a good read yearly.

The other is "A Secret History" by Donna Tart. This was her first book, and considered by most to be the better of the two she has written (the second was released last year, as I recall). This is about a group of "eccentric" Greek language students who "unwittingly" (or perhaps wittingly) kill a farmer in the woods of Vermit while playing out a Dionesian ritual. From there, things go wrong wrong wrong. Again, the character development is superb. Think of Knowles "A Seperate Peace" but twice the length with four extra dimensions. Tart won a number of litterary awards for this book (a feat she would be unable to duplicate with her next book due, in my opinion, to a failure to craft a plot as compelling as that in A Secret History).

Just my opinion.
Judd

Rarely re-read a book, but have re-read the Christopher Brookmyre book "One fine day in the middle of the night" again recently, and of course I'm almost always dipping into the short stories of Road Dahl, Edgar Allen Poe and HP Lovecraft. On a similar note, I have a very soft spot for many of the books I read as a child - most notably (as mentioend above) the 'Adventure...' books by Enid Blyton and the 'Alfred Hitchcock & The Three Investigators' books, mainly the first 20.

Of more grown-up books - I love a good short story and have re-read much of Kafka, Joyce and (as mentioned above) Roald Dahl, who to me was the king of the short story. My favourite of his 'adult' writings were the Oswald Cornelius 'adventuring fornicator and entrepreneur' stories.

John

My Grandfather used to only read Dickens, and when he had been through them all, he would choose which one to start with again. I thought it was odd, but he just loved them so much, he couldn't help himself.
Mine are:
The Grass Harp by Truman Capote
To Kill a Mockingbird by Truman Capote (Ok then...Harper Lee)
In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Braughtigan
I have to keep returning to these every couple of years

quote:

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and the entire back catalogue of Philip K Dick.

---

In a rash moment several years ago I cleared my bookshelf of a load of paperbacks, on the principle that I wouldn't read them again. It included many Philip K Dick books -

As a child;
The entire Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
The Dark is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner
As an adolescent;
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein
The "Hawkmoon" books by Michael Moorcock
The "Elric" books by Michael Moorcock
The Dancers at the End of Time by Michael Moorcock
As an adult:-
All of the above plus;
The "Flashman" books by George Macdonald Fraser
Black Ajax - by George Macdonald Fraser
The Imajica - by Clive Barker
Weaveworld - by Clive Barker
The Great and Secret Show - by Clive Barker

No great literature here!

Tolkien,CS Lewis,Susan Cooper, Alan Garner, fantastic stuff!i first read them all in my youth and still find them just as good now.(tells you a lot about me!)

Books To Read Again and Again.....and Some You Just Can't Finish

I read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert M.Pirsig at least once each year and would like to one day trace his journey across parts of the USA (although in a car and not on a motorcycle) yet his next book "Lila" is one that I just cannot get into despite trying many times.

Similarly "Catch 22" - I have owned a paperback of this for 30 years and never finished more than half before giving up - maybe 10 or so attempts over the years. Certainly it's well written and amusing but I never feel the urge to carry on with it. I must be missing something here because it's always in the "Classic" lists.

Yet I can read the novels of Tom Sharpe over and over and still laugh out loudly at the situations he describes despite knowing by heart every punchline and phrase.

So is it content or style that makes us return to particular books?

I find reading the historically books of Dorothy Dunnet intellectually stimulating because the writing is very dense and requires proper attention. Speed reading won't work because her clever economy of expression requires all words to be read.

There are two series which I have read several times and because of the depth of the story detail found new ineterpretaions each time.

these are
The "Lymond" series (6 600 page books)
The "Niccolo" series (7 600 page books)

It is also like starting a journey that will last because of the time it will take to get through all the books and the anticipated pleasure.

I also like John Le Carre and in particular the "Smiley" series for the same reasons.

GEOFF

BLT:

<<No great literature here!>>

You do yourself (and Harry F.) a disservice, sir. Certainly Flashman is great literature. It's just that people don't realise it yet.

Ron B:

I also love Tom Sharpe. He's not a million miles away from George MacDonald Fraser and the Flashman books. Catch 22 is a book I have to re-read every couple of years, although I never cared for anything else Heller wrote.


But the book I've read the most times is The Great Gatsby. Pure magic.

Davie

Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness. I used to read it about once a year. Its been a few years now. Maybe time to read it again.

Hans W

1984 - Orwell. It's all coming seemilnly close to reality........

I'm surprised that two books have yet to be mentioned.

The Bible
The Kama Sutra

Maybe we spend too much time reading the same books, listening to music and partaking in the forum disussions ?

Tried 'em both, but I don't get on with prescriptions ;-)

I'm currently re-reading Samual Pepys Diary. Fascinating, and by turns candid, touching and humane. Soon to be followed by Aldous Huxley's 'Brave new world' - an old favourite.

I'll go with Judd's vote for Donna Tart's 'Secret History', and having tried several times at it I'll vote 'Catch-22' as ...tedious.

M.

Anything by Georges Simenon, especially The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By.

"The Magus" John Fowles, innit.

Fritz Von Bubble-Millwall