What books can you just re-read forever?

[MNHubbie]

What are your old faithfuls that you can turn to when you can't be bothered with anything else?

A few of mine are:

Watchmen: Moore and Gibbons
American Psycho: Easton Ellis
Slaughter House V: Vonnegut
Good Omens: Gaiman and Pratchett
1984: Orwell
The Dark Knight Returns: Miller
Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers and Better than Life (combined edition): Grant and Naylor
Batman: Year One: Miller et al
The Selfish Gene: Dawkins

There are quite a few more but I do find myself drifting back to these a lot.

Anyone else like anything on the selection?

What are your favourites?

Any discworld by Terry Pratchett (nod to CMOTDibbler)
Most Stephen King horror/thriller (not sci fi)
Shopaholics series (for those moments when you need a bit of fluff reading )
1000 Splendid Suns - whilst I wouldn;t probably read it again for a while, it has certainly changed my view of Afghanistan
Oh and any/all Enid Blighton

My goodness kiwikat I can't believe anyoneelse has re read Tanith Lee's Silver Metal Lover so pleased as I love it and have read it many times.

Otherwise
His Dark Materials
LOTR
Espadair street/Whit/The Bridge Iain Banks
The Dark Trilogy Barbra Hamley

Mostly 'teenage' books as they are so great for comfort reading

Lots that have been mentioned - Heyers, Pratchetts, Cold Comfort Farm, I Capture the Castle, Jane Eyre.

Also Foucault's Pendulum, Eva Rice's Lost Art of Keeping Secrets and anything by Jane Smilie, Robertson Davies, Nicholson Baker, Willaim Kotzwinkle, Johnathan Coe, E.F. Benson (Mapp & Lucia), Saki and Wodehouse.

But things aren't infinitely re-readable and I try not to push my luck as I hate that feeling that you just read something once too often.

Blimey, I read American Psycho over ten years ago and I still can't get some of the more disturbing imagery out of my head, never mind read it again! Although wierdly there are TWO copies of it in our house

I'm not very good at going back to books, films, anything really, but will never get tired of reading The Handmaids Tale (am slightly obsessed with Margaret Atwood - just read After the Flood and will definitely go back to that in the future), The Great Gatsby and The Age of Innocence. There always seems to be something more to discover in there and I find them all incredibly easy to get lost in.

Also intend to re-read The Time Traveller's Wife at some point but the last time I read it I got to the last page on a beach in Goa and cried my eyes out for half an hour! Cue lots of strange looks and a v embarrassed DH

Coming Home - Rosamund Pilcher
The Shellseekers - also Rosamumd Pilcher

These may seem a bit sad to a lot of you, but I absolutely love these two books.

The Alchemist (Love love love)

Pride & Prejudice

The Handmaids Tale

The Road

Twilight Saga Can't believe no one has admitted it yet

The Little Princess

The Secret Garden

Three Men in a Boat

Mrs Dalloway

I saw the secret garden on a few lists - I'd also add one of her books for adults -
The Making of a Marchioness (first part)
as well as:
Hostages to Fortune - Elizabeth Cambridge
The Diary of a Provincial Lady
Mrs Miniver
Sea Room - Adam Nicolson
Gaudy Night - Dorothy Sayers

and my childhood reread is Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffrey. It's pulled out in times of extreme anxiety as it brings me back to feeling about ten. It's a lovely book about being different and finding acceptance.

I'm bereft too troublewith but I understand that there is a SEQUEL!! Yippee!

Oh Casabevron- I love your name! Weren't they the BEST?

The Magus - Fowles
Any Human Heart - Boyd
The Fountainhead - Rand
Anna Karenina
The Forsyte Saga
The Class - Erich Segal

Oh there are so many!.. I used to read and re-read and tehn read them again (why did I have so much time, I wonder...) There were phases - all of Astrid Lindgren; Jack London; Balzac; Gone With the Wind, The Thorn Birds; all of Erich Segal - re-reading them practically every year...

Have just read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick, and it was fab. Bladerunner was based on this novel and departs radically from it, and doesn't hold a candle to it. Recommended.

(Haystack, I salute your good taste!)

I have lots of these in common with you all.

Glad to see the Diddakoi mentioned, one of my all time favourites. Also Diary of a Nobody.

Any Human Heart is a brilliant read, although heart wrenching.

I read all of Robertson Davies at least once a year. Jane Austen, Antonia Fraser, Alan Garner are all favourite authors too.

The Adrian Mole diaries

Brideshead Revisited

Georgette Heyers are my comfort reads. My favourites are These Old Shades, Devil's Cub, Friday's Child, Frederica and Arabella.

I have never met anyone in rl who has even heard of Georgette Heyer, so I am so pleased that people on mn love her books. I don't feel so weird now

George Eliot, Jane Austen and Marian Keyes I re-read as well.

Welcome to Temptation by Jenifer Crusie

A Place of my Own by Michael Pollan, which I only bought in the first place because I liked the cover photo but I now read it about once a year

Pride and Prejudice

Any of the Revelation Space series by Alastair Reynolds

Ain't She Sweet by Susan Elizabeth Phillips (a guilty pleasure)

The wind in the willows
Pride and prejudice
Emma
The Great Gatsby
Sleeping in flame Jonathan Carrol

Everything that PG Wodehouse ever wrote in fact it's what I read most of the time between other books, so it goes PG Wodehouse, nineteen eighty four, PG Wodehouse,Shades of grey,PG Wodehouse,Dracula and so on. Sad isn't it? but I tend to do most of my reading in bed at night and I find it so comforting.

I have to agree with other people's favourites.
Pride and Prejudice would come top followed by Jane Eyre.
Georgette Heyer is like a comfort blanket and I read and re read-ever since I was a teenager.
I have only recently read I Capture the Castle but I could see that it would be one to read again.
Daphne du Maurier is another one and Margaret Forster.
There are some childrens books that I never tire of reading to children, however many times I read them:
Winnie the Pooh
Please Mrs Butler
The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch
The Tiger who came to Tea.
Graham Oakley's Church Mice series.

East of Eden - John Steinbeck
Lord of the Rings
Valley of the Dolls
Gone with the Wind
The Thornbirds
Agatha Christie books
Lauren Weisberger books
Dickens
Wilkie Collins
The Great Gatsby

Thanks to everyone. Loads of great recommendations I will have to try.

Agree that a lot of the classics can be re read.
However, I have read Fortune's Rock by Anita Shreve about three or four times...it's a real comfort read about strong attraction between an older married man and young woman. I think it's her best book by far.

Anne of Green Gables
Carrie's War
Orange Wendy
Crime and Punishment
The turn of the screw