Do you have a favourite book that you will read again and again?

[stolemyusername]

I absolutely love reading but never read a book twice, a friend once said that rereading a book that she loved was like catching up with old friends but once I know what will happen I lose interest, the only exception I have to this rule is Jane Eyre, I absolutely love this book (although I did slightly ruin it for myself when I deconstructed it for an essay.)

Please tell me what book you will read again and again and why?

Was really interested to see A Fine Balance mentioned by a previous poster. This book was given to me by one of my best friends, who loved it, and I would agree is one of the best and most intelligent, thoughtful books I have ever read, but the thought of reading it ever again fills me with abject horror - it is so relentlessly upsetting!

Mapp and Lucia series by EF Benson
The Diary of a Nobody

I have a first edition Matilda book and as well as being my most cherished book it's also one I could easily read over and over

I haven't re-read it yet, only just discovered it, but I predict Cold Comfort Farm will be a future re-read for me

Really interesting point about re-watching films. I am not a re-reader by nature but have read The Bell Jar about 5 times since I first read it age 15 and I love how your perception changes with your age. This is also true of Jane Eyre. First read at 14 then again at 32. My experience of that book second time round was totally different.

This is inspiring me to re-read several books. As so many people have mentioned it I will start with Wuthering Heights (read age 16).

Evelyn Waughs A Handful of Dust , I read it at least once every three years . If I want a book to read in the bath I have a few favourite Dick Francis novels that I could literally narrate .

A Town Like Alice by Neville Shute.....beautiful story of love.

One or two by Jilly cooper.....yeas I know, I know .

An Inspector Calls....it is a play but is so readable too.

Pride and Prejudice

Cider with Rosie....love it so much.

Yes and Adrian Mole plus the Harry Potter books.

About half the books I read are re-reads.

Probably too many to list, but these spring to mind:

All of Thomas Hardy's novels
All of Arthur Ransome's novels
To Kill a Mockingbird
Most of Steinbeck, especially The Grapes of Wrath
Cider with Rosie
On The Black Hill
Quite a lot of Nevil Shute, especially A Town Like Alice and Pied Piper
Quite a lot of Penelope Lively
Quite a lot of Margaret Forster
Quite a lot of George Eliot (but not Middlemarch)
Quite a lot of Elizabeth Gaskell

The more you read a really well-written book, the more you can get out of it. I read a lot though, so I don't feel I'm not reading new books as well. I love it when I read a book for the first time and realise I'll be re-reading it numerous times in the future. It's like meeting a new best friend.

Time travellers wife

Fay Weldon's 'Growing Rich': utterly empowering and a real hoot.

I hardly ever reread books. I worry that if I loved a book it might not be as good second time round.

I do reread Just William though. They never disappoint

Ooh actually I have reread the Claudine books by Colette.

Me also for the Anne books, Gone with the Wind, Brideshead Revisited and A town Like Alice. Also East of Eden and most of the Agatha Christies. In recent years I've re-read Every Dead Thing by John Connolly a few times and also Unless by Carol Shields. I'm sure I will re-read Let the Great World Spin very soon-it haunts me.

Used to as a child but as an adult it's very rare that I'd read anything twice.

Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy I've read a few times, but really there are just too many new books for me to go back and re read old ones!

Watership Down is probably my most reread book.

But generally, I love rereading. Other books that I have read more than twice include:

All of Jane Austen
All of Sarah Waters
The Harry Potter series
A Widow for One Year, and A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
I Capture the Castle (Dodie Smith)
Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)

I'm not including books from my childhood here, because at that point I re-read incessantly. I remember going on holiday, taking a stack of books, and reading them all two or three times in the one holiday. I was an only child whose parents took me on holidays in the middle of nowhere! I must have read most of Enid Blyton's ouevre dozens of times...

The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub.

Any book I'm not willing to reread, I generally get rid of.. charity shop, give away. I'm always rereading my books. I keep them on rotation, putting a few boxes away and digging them out 6 months later.

Mary Renaults - The Praise Singer, The Mask of Apollo, The King Must Die, the Persian Boy. All set in Ancient Greece and beautiful evocations. Love them.

Iain M Banks

Just read I Capture the Castle thanks to Mumsnet, lovely. Wish I'd discovered it at 17 but it's great even now.

Someone mentioned Goodnight Mr Tom, I find myself re-reading that too.

Robin McKinley is a lovely easy fantasy re-read when you're feeling under the weather - The Hero and the Crown, The Blue Sword, Sunshine.

I have always reread a lot. Some for comfort, but others were just good reads. If it's well-written, then a good book will give you something different every time you read it. One reason is because you see things which you didn't notice first time, because you didn't then know how the book would end, so didn't notice the significance. But you also read books differently as you age and experience different things in your own life, and also realise the world isn't so black and white as it is when you're a teenager.

When I was a child, I loved the Laura Ingalls Wilder books - so exciting, all those new places! My mother read them differently, how Caroline was always having to pack up and move on because Charles wanted to go west. Now I'm older, and want to feel more settled and secure, I can see that point of view more, but I really didn't understand where my mother was coming from as a child (even though I'd have been distraught if we'd had to pack up home and move.)

Also, at school, I had to read about Dido and Carthage, and I couldn't understand how she could be so bothered about a man when she had a whole city to run. I've since experienced grief and how it can totally screw up your brain and ability to exist normally for a while, so I'm a bit more forgiving these days. In contrast, I'm rather more cynical about romance these days.

Malory Towers series
Anne of Green Gables series
Jane Austen, any
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn -Betty Smith

The Dark Tower series. I always notice new things when re-reading. And now I made my husband read it, and he also loves it, I have someone to be a Ka Tet dork with other than my Dad

I read the magic faraway tree several times :o
I used to re read books, just because I'd run out of books and was desperate to read something but these days it's so easy to search for new reading material on the net and get books cheaply through the post or download them that I'm just not inclined to re read anything.

Much of what I read is non fiction which broadly comes under the title of popular science and I figure it's probably out of date pretty quickly because knowledge has moved on so re reading would seem like a backward step

I so love the fact that I can sprawl on the sofa with my laptop, copy the title of a book from this thread past it into the amazon browser and click to instantly download a kindle sample.
What fantastic luxury

Imagine going back to the old days when you had to go to a book shop to get a book

I re-read loads of stuff. My absolute favourite book ever is "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" by Muriel Spark and I re-read that every couple of years. I re-read my Agatha Christies even though I know whodunnit in every one (although having just re-read "Postern of Fate", it really is drivel, and I'm going to try to remember not to read it again!). I think the book that most changed for me on re-reading was "Brideshead Revisited" - I first read it when I was a teenager or early 20s, and was at Oxford, and what I remembered was all gilded youth and privilege. When I re-read it recently the focus for me was much more on what happened to Sebastian after university and I found it unexpectedly moving.

Not the most high brow, but for me it's Harry Potter. I grew up with the books (first one came out when i was 10) and i re-read them every year, usually over winter/christmas. They are easy reading, and i love so many of the characters. I know them inside out yet genuinely enjoy them every time.

I had them all individual, and they were battered and falling apart, so my lovely mum bought me a boxed set of them about 3 years ago. I was lovely to read them in a new fresh book! (simple pleasure...)