What books do you re-read regularly?

I don't have a list of favourites to re-read but if I finish a book and think that it's written in an interesting way then I will re-read it to concentrate more on the style rather than on the story. I find that the novelty of a new book drives me to get to the end of the story and I probably miss some interesting moments.

The Discworld series - some more than others but they probably all get an airing once every 5 years or so.

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - also every 5 years or so

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby - This one is probably every couple of years or so

A couple of Bill Brysons earlier books

The first couple of Swallows and Amazons books

One particular Star Trek novel called A Stitch in Time

The Expanse series haven't hit the repeat list yet as I only finished them last year, but I know they'll be getting re-read within the next decade

The shell seekers by rosamunde pilcher. It’s my pure comfort in a book ❤️

where is a good place to start with Dorothy L Sayers ?

At the beginning! Lord Peter's character develops over time, as do his personal relationships (without wanting to get into spoilers) so it's best to read in publication order.

If you just want to try one, a good standalone which isn't really part of the overall development is The Nine Tailors. That's the first one I read, because I was given it for Christmas when I was 14 or 15.

Georgette Heyer. I have read them throughout my adolescence and adulthood and enjoyed them in different ways every time. I have also read a lot of GH copies, and secretly rejoice when I can say what book their idea has been stolen from.

Pride & Prejudice, I think because the BBC version was a mainstay of my teen years.

Tintin.

@ElizabethVonArnim where is a good place to start with Dorothy L Sayers ?

I re-read The Summer Book by Tove Jansson, The Great Gatsby, all of Lissa Evans, About a Boy by Nick Hornby.

Pride and prejudice
My brilliant friend
1984
Hunger games
Les Miserables
(Weird combination, I know)

The Secret History
The Bell Jar
Menoirs of a Geisha

Oh well seems I’m weird, I am autistic. I’ve read nearly every one of those books , I shall reread some see if I feel any differently.

War and Peace and The Magic Mountain are books I reread every few years, despite the significant time commitment.

A Month in the Country (J.L. Carr) is another one I return to often.

(The only books I regularly and consistently re-read are Jilly Cooper's Rutshire Chronicles 🤫)

I'm really interested that you chose "The Kitchen God's Wife" z I love Amy Tan but that was my least favourite.

100 Secret Senses is outstanding though.

Sorry to derail @Snorerephron , hope you find some lovely books!

I read books again because I like the story- and when I read them, I see the story acted out in my mind, as it were. It's like watching a favourite film.

The wind in the willows, it's just gorgeous, I have read it many times and now have a treasured special edition.
For non fiction I return again and again to Joan Didion's Year of Magic Thinking, it's heartbreaking, shocking and thought provoking all at once. I don't know how she actually got through that year .

I would have said the same when I originally read them. Now, particularly having read volumes of his collected letters in which it's pretty clear he was a 'delightful' leech on people with money, I find the persona cloth-eared and carefully crafted, with all that swooping from sleeping in barns with shepherd to hunting parties at the exquisite houses of contessas within 24 hours.

@Dappy777 ooh yes, A Time of Gifts and Between The Woods and the Water, which I probably love even more; there's such a sad end-of-summer beauty to it, knowing this whole Austro-Hungarian kastély way of life is about to be swept away by WW2 and the Iron Curtain coming down....

Daddy Long Legs - Jean Webster
Dear Lupin - Roger Mortimer

Every year I read
The Fortnight in September by RC Sheriff
The Darling Buds of May and the others in the series, HE Bates
The Crimson Petal and the White, Michel Faber.

When my pain is unmanageable even with my strong painkillers I find the repetition of familiar books, programmes and films soothing. A bit like little children who always finish story time with their favourite story. For DD it was two new stories and then a very familiar favourite. It brings stability.

These are mine:

I Capture the Castle
The Bell Jar
No More Meadows
East of Eden
The Portrait of a Lady
Rebecca
The Wasp Factory
The Sea, The Sea
To The Lighthouse
The Greengage Summer
Gone With The Wind
Wide Sargasso Sea
The Chrysalids
Tess of the d’Urbervilles
The Catcher in the Rye
Sons and Lovers
Alice in Wonderland
A Little Princess
Anne of Green Gables
A Dolls’ House
The Handmaid’s Tale
Little Women
The Shell Seekers
Ballet Shoes
The Picture of Dorian Gray

Patrick Leigh Fermor: A Time of Gifts
Evelyn Waugh: Decline and Fall
P G Wodehouse: Right Ho Jeeves
Oscar Wilde: Dorian Gray
Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway
Iris Murdoch: Under the Net
Robert Graves: Goodbye to All That
Bertrand Russell: Autobiography
Anthony Burgess: Enderby

Great choice. Harold Bloom thought Ford was one of the most underrated novelists of the 20th-century. The TV adaptation with Benedict Cumberbatch is pretty good.

I'm a big re-reader so my list works be very long. I don't even mind that, with some old friends, I know every line of dialogue and there are no surprises left.
If I had to have just one 'Desert Island' book for the rest of my life, it would have to be Middlemarch, because there are so many strands within it. But I would also read & re-read Wolf Hall & Bring Up the Bodies (but, as a pp said, not The Mirror and the Light), Persuasion, Emma & P+P, the Cazalet series, Bleak House, Jane Eyre, A Suitable Boy and all 20 of the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey-Maturin books.

I love seeing The Little White Horse mentioned here. I adored it as a child then came across it more recently and still found it enchanting.

Talking of books that hit differently at different stages of your life and of biographies... I mentioned the Little House On The Prairie - that's a very different perspective as an adult (The Long Winter is tremendous and horrific). Prairie Fires (Wilder's biography by Caroline Fraser) is a masterpiece, I've read it at least 3 times.

All Jane Austen. All Josephine Tey. Middlemarch. Rivals (not her other ones) The Shardlake series. The Peter Wimsey series. Antonia Forest.