Which book/s have you read more than once?

[Rane Longfox]

Gawd, books i've reread? Millions

Malazan book of the Fallen - Steven Erikson. All of them a varying number of times. Gardens of the Moon being the leader at the moment with 16 re-reads.
American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Night's Dawn trilogy - Peter F. Hamilton
Illium/Olympos - Dan Simmons
Culture series - Iain M. Banks
Weavers of Saramyr trilogy - Chris Wooding
Harry Potter
His Dark Materials - Pullman
Chasm City - Al Reynolds
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
Veniss Underground - Jeff Vandermeer
The Year of our War - Steph Swainston

The list goes on and on

[Soraya]

i'm actually paying attention to all the new books i'm not aware of. read "Time Traveller's Wife" it was going good until towards the end. i guess i got angry that he died and the woman had to survive without him. Tabanca!

the lovely bones was really good but cant read that over, was just too sad. That's going to be a movie too, but one i can't wait to see

[Tea is my copilot]

Originally Posted by Soraya

read "Time Traveller's Wife" it was going good until towards the end. i guess i got angry that he died and the woman had to survive without him.

He came back when she was 82.
That almost killed me. I like the whole retrospective thing, because it was interesting to discover some parts of the beggining in the end.
And I just realized it says BOOKS.
So I have to pull my Little Mermaid off the list.

[GrownUp]

AAAAAAAAAAArgh! I did not want to know that!

[Tea is my copilot]

I'm so sorry.
Really.
No one mentioned that book, so I assumed no one was interested. And it's not exactly sci-fi or fantasy.
If it's any consolation, it's totally worth it and the ending isn't really that important.
Sorry again.
Really really sorry.
I hate myself now.

[Rane Longfox]

Burn tea burn!!

Someone once told me the ending of a book I was enjoying. I hunted them down and spoon-fed them their own brainzzzzzzzzz

You should hope GrownUp isn't the vindictive sort

[slan]

If a book is worth finnishing, then it's worth reading again. There's aways something you miss the first time round.

[Brown Rat]

When I saw the title of this thread, I thought, "Huh, I haven't reread many books." Then I went to my bookshelf and started jotting down titles.

Ack! Here's a list of most of my rereads, in reverse alphabetical order.

Gene Wolfe, The Shadow of the Torturer
T.H. White, The Once and Future King
John Varley, Steel Beach
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Frederick Pohl, Man Plus
Alexander Panshin, Rite of Passsage
Andre Norton, ‘Ware Hawk
Pat Murphy, Adventures of Time and Space with Max Merriwell
Vonda McIntyre, The Exile Waiting
Anne McCaffrey, Restoree and Dragonflight
George Martin and Lisa Tuttle, Windhaven
Ursula Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, the Liaden books
Donald Kingsbury, Courtship Rite
Alexander Keys, The Forgotten Door
Barry Hughart, Bridge of Birds
Frank Herbert, Dune
Robert Heinlein, Glory Road, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, and Stranger in a Strange Land
Lisa Goldstein, Red Magician
Teresa Edgerton, Goblin Moon
Philip Dick, Man in the High Castle and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
Lester Del Rey, The Runaway Robot
John Crowley, Aegypt
Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game
John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar
Octavia Butler, Kindred
Lois Bujold, the Miles books.
Steven Barnes, Streetlethal
Catherine Asaro, the Skolian Empire books


Some of them I reread because they are "comfort" books (e.g., the Liaden books and others with strong romances), some I reread because they are classics (e.g., Dick's books), and some I reread because I teach them (e.g., Murphy, Butler, and Hughart). Others I reread just because I've run out of new books and am browsing my shelves, looking for something that I remember enjoying but don't remember why (e.g., Barnes and Martin/Tuttle).

Some end up disappointing me (e.g., the Heinlein books, which I read when young, never noticing the massive didactic interruptions that bothered me on rereading decades later).

Some end up surprising me (e.g., the Keys book, which I purchased and read when I was in the third grade, and which, on rereading, reveals many liberal leanings and SFF longings that I still hold dear today--leaning and longings that must have shaped me at that tender age in ways I never noticed!).

[Jives]

You know, I keep coming back to three or four books that I just can't seem to get enough of:

"Malevil" by Robert Merle ("The Day of the Dolphin" guy)

This tour de force of a nuclear war and it's aftermath does the opposite that most writers do: Instead of trying for scope, he just tells the whole story from the point of view of a charismatic French farmer and his friends. The struggle to replant, save the animals, and set up a new society is a fascnating character study...done perfectly.

"Earth Abides" by George R. Stewart

Is there a better book on the effects of a worldwide superplague and it's aftermath? Not likely. Forget "The Stand" This is what it would really be like. Especially poignant is the protagonists struggle to keep learning and education alive, despite a family / tribe that is bent on returning to arrows and caves.

The explanations of the see-saw battles of flora and fauna to readjust to the absence of man is awesome. Read this and I promise you you'll be hooked for life. Truly a "classic" in every sense of the word.

"This Perfect Day" by Ira Levin

Forget "1984", throw out "Brave New World", again this is the definitive dystopian future book. I've always thought that computers could run the world a thousand times better than we do, but I don't anymore.

this book, which describes one man's battle to escape the oppressive rules of a techno society is absolutely brilliant. Why? The society has it all, it's happy, it's creative, there's no disease, war, or poverty!

So what's missing? freedom, of course, but something else too.

It's compelling. I've read it 17 times, and when I'm done typing this, I'm heading to the used book store to get a new copy because my old one is in tatters.

[diva]

hi a newby here but no one seems to be mentioning Asimov, classic.

If there is anyone who reads bicentenneal man and does not cry, or want to go out and change society for the better, then their positronic brain needs realigning.

Oh and those bloody stupid films with will smith or robin williams...grrrr

Happy to see some book I have yet to read will look them up with eager interest.

At the end of the day good literature should transcend genre.

[littlemissattitude]

Oh, sheesh. I don't know. Lots of them, in and out of science fiction/fantasy.

In sf/fantasy, off the top of my head, and in no particular order:

Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land (at least three or four times)
Robert Heinlein, Farnham's Freehold (but only because the second time was for a class)
Kage Baker, In the Garden of Iden
Kage Baker, Sky Coyote
Kage Baker, Mendoza in Hollywood
Kage Baker, The Cemetery Game ...all four several times
Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game (three times; maybe four)
Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow (twice)
David Brin, Earth (twice)

I know there are more, but I can't think at the moment.

[Rane Longfox]

Originally Posted by diva

hi a newby here but no one seems to be mentioning Asimov, classic.

If there is anyone who reads bicentenneal man and does not cry, or want to go out and change society for the better, then their positronic brain needs realigning.

Oh and those bloody stupid films with will smith or robin williams...grrrr

Happy to see some book I have yet to read will look them up with eager interest.

At the end of the day good literature should transcend genre.

Just because a book is really really good, doesn't mean you'd want to re-read it though...

[chrispenycate]

With mylimited finances and the lack of any decent English speaking book store within an hour's travel, I'm not going to list the books I've reread- besides, we have a two thousand characters maximum limit.

However, looking into the reasons why one might want to read a book over and over.
1: comfort factor, security blanket, like a child wanting to hear the same fairytale before going to sleep (children get very annoyed with me when I modify the stories, getting Goldilocks torn apart by justifyably furious ursines, or Hansel and Gretel arrested for agressing old ladies)

2: "I can't remember what was in this one at all" before you drag it down to the second hand book shop, just a few pages, it can't have been that good if it left so little trace

3: Part 37 of the series has come out, so I'd better skim volumes 1-36, just so I'll know who the characters were

4: "Hey, I read that in '63, and I loved it back then" (normally said while browsing a second hand bookshelf) Frequently followed by " My tastes have changed, haven't they?"

5: There are probably lots more- "I'll just analyse how he maintained the interest through this slow bit" mine recently "If I'm writing in his universe, I have to keep checking I never contradict him" "how did she get round that particular problem?('Oh, I see. By not noticing it existed?)" And I'm aware that not everyone's memory fuctions quite like mine; so perhaps you can forget whodunnit, and rediscover the path to discovery.

[Parsimony]

The Shannara books by Terry Brooks, the Belgariad and Mallorean by David Eddings, The Chronicles of Narnia, LOTR, and Harry Potter.

[littlemissattitude]

Originally Posted by chrispenycate

children get very annoyed with me when I modify the stories

at Chris. You know, this is one of the reasons I learned to read at such a young age. My fairy tale of choice when I was a little one was "Rumplestilskin", and my father had to tell it to me every night. He would get bored and he would change things around, and I would set him straight and tell him to tell it the right way. Well, he was a fairly patient man, so this went on for awhile. However, one night I pushed it a little too far. He got frustrated and told me that if I wanted to hear the story again, I was going to have to learn to read it for myself. So I did.