Which book do you recommend for a re-read?
Asked by
naomi29 (
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January 22nd, 2011
There are some books I have only read once and plan on only reading once.
Other books, however, get better each time I read them. I pick up on new themes, notice new character traits and generally have a different experience the next time around.
One good example, I believe is “Moby Dick”.
Do you have an example of this? What is your favorite book to re-read? Which book provides new insights each time you read it?
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Huckleberry Finn is the one I would choose.:)
Pride and Prejudice, War and Peace, To Kill a Mockingbird
the Harry Potter series, all of the Chronicles of Prydain, No Country for Old Men, and Watchmen.
I find myself re-reading many of Neal Stephenson’s works. His earlier works are more entertaining while his later works tend to be heavy, both metaphorically and literally; the audio version of The Baroque Cycle has a run-time of ~110 hours and the dead tree version I have (the original three-volume, first-printing hardcovers) can double as furniture.
The best compromise is Cryptonomicon, which is only one volume about three inches thickand, unlike Anathem, it doesn’t go out of it’s way to try to make your brain hurt. However, Snow Crash and Diamond Age_, two of his earlier works that are regular paperback-sized, have enough subtle yet deep insights that re-reading is almost mandatory.
Most of his works are also inter-related in ways that give even further insight into one book after reading another.
My partner just started rereading Lord of the Rings for the fourth time. She also read The Great Gatsby each summer for a few years.
I second any of the Harry Potter series (particularly #5), and for non-fiction I’m rereading Derrick Jensen’s Endgame for the third time.
Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Eros the Bittersweet by Anne Carson
Anything by Shakespeare
Lamb by Christopher Moore
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Anything by Terry Pratchett
@jerv – I actually had a harder time with Cryptonomicon than Anathem because my brain couldn’t follow the technospeak. But if you say it gets better, I might give it another go.
The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner has a whole new meaning on the second reading. Also anything by Gregory Maguire. Harry Potter actually gets less interesting for me :(
Pride and Prejudice
Harry Potter Series
AND most of Jane Eyre’s books
@efritz I have no issues with the tech as I’ve been into computers for >30 years, but some of the math went over my pointy head. I pretty much skimmed those sections quickly as I am more interested in things like information theory than in the Riemann Zeta function. Overall a good read, but there are times when you need to know when to try to not look.
The two books im my life that I regularly re-read are Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (7 times) and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (goodness, I’ve lost count!)... The former is simply because I’m a helpless romantic and I love the underlying darkness in the story… Brave New World is a book I find myself compelled to read almost every two years or so, almost as a reminder of what life could be like, and how close we are to so many elements of it.
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
I think @nailpolishfanatic meant all of Charlotte Bronte’s books. Jane Eyre is the title of one of her books.
Pretty much anything by Charles Dickens, but especially A Christmas Carol.
Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Anything by Edgar Allen Poe
Also, The Road by Cormac McCarthy. One of the heaviest books I’ve read in a long time.
@Kardamom Yeah OMG I totally did not recognize that I had written Jane Eyre…
I meant Charlotte Bronte.
Thanks for correcting me :)
Camus The Stranger
Camus The Plague
Kafka The Trial
Kafka The Castle
Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake for the strange atmosphere and the lovely poetic language.
I have reread several book series. And I have several that I plan on rereading. Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Mortal Instruments, and Darkest Powers. Love them all!
@nailpolishfanatic Do you or anyone else know how to put the 2 little dots over the letter “e” in Bronte? sorry that I don’t know, it’s probably super-easy
Oh yeah, how about Watership Down. I can’t remember any of that “bunny language” now.
I am also a huge Harry Potter fan. Those books are timeless.
The Stand by Stephen King
Day Of The Triffids by Windham
Alice In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.
Crime and Punishment. There is so much packed into that book that reading it a few times helps discover all the layers.
Catch 22 is my favorite re-read.
Candide (one night read)
Cather in the Rye
Anything by steinbeck
In Cold Blood
anna karenina
@Kardamom , no its okay I don’t know how to either. But you can just google her name and copy the name like so Brontë :)
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