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?

Hmm I don't normally go back to books but the following I have:

Harry Potter
The Little White Horse
Carol O'Connell Books - Mostly Mallory as main character
Colin Forbes - Tweed main character
Some Enid Blyton books
Roald Dahl books

I like something that I know what's going to happen but you can have the anticipation of what is going to happen but yes it's like an old friend too. I also like new stories and recommendations but rarely find new books that I would re-read time and again.

I recently read a book called The Road to Middlemarch, which is a writer's account of her rereading of that novel and the way her perceptions of it have changed over the years based on her own life experiences. Made me feel slightly better about the fact that I myself have read Middlemarch about four times.

I am a constant rereader. Eliot, Dickens, Austen, the Brontes, Lord of the Rings, loads of favourite children's books. Plus Jilly Cooper of course! I do read lots of new things too, though - I am currently reading Mists of Avalon for the first time (thanks to the recommendations up thread).

I re-read all the time too! In fact I give away most books that I don't want to read again. Some I have to keep because they are so good but I can't reread. One of them is Timothy Mo's The Redundancy of Courage. A great title and a great book. But I can't read it again. Makes me cry just thinking about it.

Thurlow mentioned Jonathan Strange. I love that book and have read many times. Must be due for a reread soon.

I want to read Anne of Green Gables again.

But I reread the Enid Blyton Famous Five books but concluded that they are not as good as the stuff my DSs read these days ...

Georgette Heyer, Nevil Shute, Mrs. Gaskell's Wives and Daughters and D. K. Broster's The Jacobite Trilogy.

In my youth I re read most books over and over, unless they were complete rubbish. LOTR is one I read with regularity every year, also Austen (especially Northanger Abbey, and so the connected Udolpho book). And the Katy Did books, though anything by Susan Coolidge.
I was also very obsessed taken with a book called Connemara Journal by Ethel Mannin and I read that an awful lot.

Don't re read so much nowadays. Though I do occasionally like to skim old favourites, such as, I Capture the Castle. Definitely Wuthering Heights (my absolute favourite) also occasionally a set of autobiographical books, set in the early 1900s, by Margaret Penn. And a couple of old poetry books

love story by Eric Segal. i can read this in an evening and ALWAYS end up sobbing. It's really cathartic; i can get out any stress i may have and also enjoy a beautiful story at the same time!

I adore Fay Weldon, especially 'Growing Rich'.

We follow the fates of three girls leaving school, each taking different paths.
The feminist voice couldn't be clearer, so it's a really inspiring read.

Weldon uses humour perfectly to get her point across. I'd recommend it to all teenage girls especially, but plenty of grown women would enjoy it, nodding heads sagely as they go.