Novels worth reading more than twice.

@Wendyway76, I’d recommend Rebecca West’s The Fountain Overflows trilogy for that same sense of sinking into a complete, brilliantly-evoked world — an Edwardian childhood in a shabby-genteel family in South London with brilliantly-vivid characters, child prodigies in music, a genius but neglectful father, poltergeists, a murder case, then WWI and after.

With the caveat that West never finished it, despite working on it for most of her life on and off, so the second two volumes were incomplete and put together posthumously, and one lingering mystery is never solved (apart from an editor’s note referring to West’s notes.)

I can never recommend it strongly enough.

Possession is another book I've read several times. A literary mystery and a romance, a bundle of rediscovered love letters, starts in a library - it's got everything.
Also, for everyone who lives du Maurier's Rebecca, there is Rebecca's Tale, a follow up written by Sally Beauman which is actually wonderful.
Also another recommendation for The House On the Strand (time travel, LSD,).

A Dance to the Music of Time
South Riding
Lots of others mentioned above.

Oh What a Paradise it Seems by John Cheever

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell

We are book kindred spirits!

Ooh and A Little Princess and The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodson Burnett - more comfort reads

I’m a big re-reader - also listen to certain books on audio multiple times:
Sabriel series by Garth Nix
Jane Austen - usually reread or listen once annually
Jane Eyre - think I’ve read this about 10 times
Random Georgette Heyer when unwell - so comforting
Anne of Green Gables - also a comfort read
A suitable boy - have read it three times and could see myself doing so again, it’s so rich and dense I get more from it each time

I reread a lot - my internet is crap and insomnia means I need to read something on my kindle. Hence I go for books that are not too interesting that I can't fall back to sleep.

Wide awake I love books that had me so enthralled I missed my tube stop eg crime and punishment and a hundred years of solitude and those that disturbed me and were current to a younger me - Ian McEwan and Iain banks.

@AudiobookListener I find Cormac McCarthy's writing very beautiful. Even though his subjects are dark. It's almost got a biblical rhythm and definitely poetic. I wrote a thesis on it too!

"He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it."

The Woman in White. Pacey page turner even tho I know exactly what happens next!

Wolf Hall. So believable.
From childhood, Ballet Shoes and the Gemma series. Read them so many times.

I'm a big re-reader.

I've read these multiple times since I was a teen:

All of the Norah Lofts novels - I re-read Gads Hall nearly every year
All of the Eva Ibbotson novels
Jeeves and Wooster novels
Agatha Christie
Some Maeve Binchy
Joanna Trollope
Anthony Trollope - my copies of some of them are falling apart - especially Barchester Towers and The Last Chronicle of Barset - oh and Can You Forgive Her?

There is nothing like opening an old familiar book, knowing how comforting it is going to be.

My ultimate comfort book Is The Secret Garden and I just bought myself the most gorgeous version when I was in Liberty last week.

The all souls books by Deborah Harkness I re-read quite a lot as well.

There is one by Maeve Binchy called Echoes which I read when I need to feel cosy and safe.

Also
By grand Central station I sat down and wept

@Regalia agree, awful. She writes so well though, you really feel as though you're in it.

Another vote for Vanity Fair...read so many times.

Also "I don't know how she does it" by Alison Pearce.
I read it and recognized myself and cried...since have read it many times, as I have got older I recognize myself in the protagonist and wonder why on earth I felt /behaved like that...there is a sequel but it's not so good.

The Maddaddam trilogy by Margaret Atwood

Though I can’t forgive the Fridge Incident…😪

The Diary of a Nobody
I Capture the Castle
Jane Eyre
The Shell Seekers

Oooh A S Byatt - the quartet is fab too the one that starts with the virgin in the garden

I've re-read The Count of Monte Cristo numerous times. As well as To Kill a Mockingbird.

My normally re-reads for those cold, wet, winter days are the "cosy" ones like Narnia, His Dark Materials

I find it hard to re-read too, the only books I've read more than a couple of times in adulthood are the Bill Brysons. There are just too many new books waiting to be read! Although I think I used to re-read as a girl/young teen because some of the classics I know inside out, Little Women, Little House on the Prairie series, Ballet Shoes etc. Also the James Herriot books.

So when I do re-read it tends to be after about a 20 year interval. In the last couple of years Persuasion, Anne of Green Gables, The Shell Seekers. I have just downloaded The Day of the Jackal (99p on Kindle today) as I was obsessed with Frederick Forsyth and the like as an older teen.

Another vote for the Maeve Kerrigan series by Jane Casey. With every re-read I spot something new about the crime plot and the sub-plot(s).

Great thread! So many to add to my list.

Foster by Claire Keegan

I'm going to have to stop opening these mumsnet book threads. Each time my tbr list grows enormously!