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Original poster

it;'s best the twelfth time - re-reads!

170 replies

tyaca · 28/09/2007 23:41

ok --- what have you read sooooo many times??

Cold Comfort Farm poss tops my list

Though i've been reading antonia forest non-stop for twenty years

my sister swears that kids author, cynthia voight, peaks on a twelfth read ;-)

OP posts:
Original poster
tyaca · 09/10/2007 15:04

hey bad zelda, i don't have the concentration to watch films, and find when i do i never remember them

i think i've watched 5 films a hundred times and either havent watched any others or just camn't remember!

OP posts:
CatIsSleepy · 09/10/2007 14:27

LOL @ margoandjerry...get a grip!

slowreader · 09/10/2007 14:15

Out of Africa- Karen Blixen. I have read it so many times.

BadZelda · 09/10/2007 14:06

Hmm yes I agree - not with those specific examples, but a couple of others spring to mind.

spookybatoscar · 09/10/2007 13:45

BadZelda...do you find there are films you can just watch loads tho? and no matter what point you encounter them? I find LA Confidential. American Beauty Almost Famous and Usual Suspects just grb me everytime

margoandjerry · 09/10/2007 13:42

You are right, catissleepy. I even annoyed myself with my last post!

BadZelda · 09/10/2007 13:35

and a little off-topic, but there's VERY few films that stand a second look I find.

BadZelda · 09/10/2007 13:35

things I reread frequently:
'Stand on Zanzibar' (john brunner)
'Foucault's Pendulum' (umberto eco)

  • anything by haruki murakami
  • anthologies (e.g. short japanese fiction, gothic tales, etc)
spookybatoscar · 09/10/2007 13:20

Morkingbird...durrh Mockingbird

Note to self, preview messages before posting

CatIsSleepy · 09/10/2007 12:20

read both!

spookybatoscar · 09/10/2007 10:28

To Kill a Morkinbird, just fantastic, it changes everytime I read it

margoandjerry · 09/10/2007 10:13

Am going to be annoying and say don't read Atonement - read the Go Between by LP Hartley instead. Same story, better writer, imho.

CatIsSleepy · 09/10/2007 10:04

MAS- you should definitely read Atonement. Think it's one of Ian McEwan's best books. He's so good at getting right into people's heads (having said that I think he'd written some duffers too...didn't like Amsterdam or Saturday much at all)

MaryAnnSingletomb · 09/10/2007 09:51

CatIsSleepy - I really want to read Atonement, was hoping we might do it for book group, and love The Rotters Club

milkyJammy · 09/10/2007 09:44

No "great" literature (sorry! to the author) but one I love to reread when I want something fun and light is Dancing to the Piper, by Kate something-beginning-with-F (Fenton I think). Enjoyable plot with enough to it that it took several rereads before I remembered exactly how it all worked out.

CatIsSleepy · 09/10/2007 09:42

Have just re-read Atonement. It was fab.

Have read Silas Marner about three or four times and I always love it. I"ll read it again if I can find it! (too many books in our house...)

Have read Middlemarch twice, and I'm sure I'll read it again at some point.

I read New York Trilogy by Paul Auster several times and still never understood it, but was intrigued by it. Kept thinking I'd get it next time round.

Have read The Rotters Club by Jonathan Coe at least twice too...or maybe three times...So funny and poignant too. Must re-read the Closed Circle (the sequel) again sometime too...

MaryAnnSingletomb · 09/10/2007 09:32

oh I'm pleased Vulgar - it's made me want to read it again now !
I'd also like to re read Nevil Shute's A Town Like Alice

Vulgar · 09/10/2007 09:07

I've just started reading the L-shaped room after it was recommended on this thread.

And I'm loving it!!!

the housework can wait!

kizzie · 08/10/2007 21:07

slightly off topic - but just raising a slightly ashamed hand. i havent managed to get through one of the Harry Potter books even once. I just dont get them. My 2 DS love them. One in particular just rattles through them and reads them over and over again. Ive really really tried but they just dont do anything for me.

kizzie · 08/10/2007 21:04

Oh goodness - I forgot Secret Garden. And I read it to DS recently and he loved it!

kizzie · 08/10/2007 21:03

Jane Eyre

Wuthering Heights

Rebecca

Tess of the D'urbevilles

To Kill a Mocking Bird

The Colour Purple

(interestingly all books i read as a young teenager - obviously all had a big impact on me. I never re-read books that I first read as an adult.)

My Calvin and Hobbes comic books (not quite the same i know - but i love them)

Reading this list has reminded that I must read Cold Comfort Farm. Its something Ive never got round to.

ScotGirl · 08/10/2007 16:40

Very similar to a topic on Radio 4 Open Book last week - someone had written in fed up reading sad depressing books and wanted some recommendations for books to lift the spirit. These were the recommendations (taken from Radio 4 website) - interestingly many are listed above:

All novels by Jane Austen:
Sense and Sensibility
Pride and Prejudice
Mansfield Park
Emma
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Publisher: Vintage Classics

Cranford by Mrs Gaskill
Publisher: Oxford World Classics

House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
Publisher: Black Swan

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Publisher: Penguin

Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
Publisher: Picador

Four Letters of Love by Niall Williamson
Publisher: Picador

Original poster
tyaca · 08/10/2007 14:17

mrs shakleton,

yes, i used to think miranda, but gone off it. perhaps, unsurprinsgly, Thalia never made any names lists

i hear AF burnt the transcripts of last book (BUT that could be me confusing her with a dif dead author!)

but yes, gutted, not to find out what happened, hear they were all in 6th form.... nicky presumably head of games, miranda head girl

OP posts:
time4tea · 08/10/2007 12:24

what a great thread

I capture the castle
cold comfort farm
pride and prejudice

but also, more than all the others put together

the secret garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

(last read in hospital when DS2 born and the first night home, washed down with half a bottle of red wine - absolute bliss)

mrsshackleton · 08/10/2007 10:42

Vulgar, you've inspired me to dig out more Shena Mackay - it is great when you discover you're not the only fan, books being such a solitary pursuit
And Tyaca, I'm going to look up the old af threads in geeky fashion. Esther would be great. Or Miranda? I always wanted a daughter called Nicola and a son called Lawrie, but dh had other ideas ...
You're right The Attic Term loses it a bit, she did slightly go off rails when she tried to go all seventies and groovy
But she is still a towering genius and I wish there was a way of seeing the last Marlow book she was apparently in the middle of when she died

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