Are there any books you re-read frequently?

Some people have a book they read every year. I've never been that devoted to any book, but I suppose the most salient reason to keep a book in my personal library that I've already read is the anticipation that I may want to read it again in the future. The only other reason I can think of for hanging onto books I've read is so that I can stare at their spines in a sort of trance of thought-without-thoughts - something I catch myself doing about once a week at least.

Anyway, I haven't been doing much re-reading in the past few years. Too many unread books tempting me into untrodden paths.

How about you? Is there a book you re-read with some regularity?

Too little time to re-read these days unless school requires it, but I will quite often pull Jonathan Lethem's The Disappointment Artist and Robin Wood's Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan off my shelf to re-read certain chapters.

for a few years when i was a child i would read the entire 'dark is rising' series at each solstice

time was much slower then

not entire books since i don't even have time to read everything i want to the first time around, but certain passages or chapters i particularly like e.g. the bit in Infinite Jest about how the invention of video chat supposedly played out, and the bit about tattoos. and there's plenty of short stories i like enough to reread occasionally.

over the past few year have frequently re-read

the first four of herbert's dune books
crowley's "engine summer"
gene wolfe's "book of the new sun"
samuel delany's "triton" and "stars in my pocket"
hal foster's "return of the real"
various collections of borges' short fiction
a douglas hofstader + daniel dennett edited collection called "the mind's i"
a seamus heaney edited collection of poetry called "the rattle bag"

Define "frequently". I tend to selectively return to things periodically (ie every 5-10 years). There's Tolkien, PKD, Suetonius, Tacitus, de Toqueville, Moorcock, Nabokov, Mahfouz, Borges, Welsh, Silverberg, Ballard, Narayan, Calvino - I revisit when the mood strikes.

I teach a Poe/Bradbury/Le Guin class every year, so I reread big bits and pieces of each in preparation. And lots of critical work on each. But each has such a large body of work that it's easy to find new areas for exploration. And they're constantly impressive -- Bradbury especially.

Since I teach middle grades, I also read LOTS of YA over and over, and a bunch of it holds up to annual scrutiny. Richard Peck, Gary Soto, Elizabeth Wein, Jacqueline Woodson, etc.

I feel like I haven't been rereading books as much in the last few years but I there are a few I reread out of nostalgia, and I'll pick up Cruddy by Lynda Barry when I need to radically alter my frame of mind. I've read Watership Down and The Master and Margarita several times over. Planning to reread War with the Newts as a post-election corrective.

Define "frequently".

I have no problem with each ilxor defining this however it suits them. That's SOP in this kind of thread.

i'm not sure how many times i've re-read I Claudius. it's not an inordinate amount, but my current paperback copy is falling to bits as i try to squeeze one last read out of it, it's like the Distintegration Loops of Rome-based potboilers

I don't have the time to read new books, let alone re-read old ones. I know I've read the Hitchhikers series more than once, and Alasdair Gray's short stories more than once, but lifetimes apart

^this

I reread short stories often. I reread Benito Cereno a few weeks ago.

Books I'll randomly pick up around the house when bored, have nothing new, or need fluff for the pool/bathroom: Morris' Dutch, Merrill's poetry, Deborah Eisenberg's brick of a story collection, Mencken.

standard fantasy rereads include tolkien, robert jordan, robin hobb

at swim two birds also on the list

um yes it's called the bible and it keeps my soul from eternal damnation? fyi

oh also space raptor butt redemption

something wicked this way comes
pale fire
random chapters of moby-dick
labyrinths
antigone
watchmen

gravity's rainbow now prob one reread away from frequent

i read the phantom tollbooth at least once a year between ages probably 6 and 25 but haven't lately

the YA novel i still go back to is avi's nothing but the truth

i wish i reread plato and gibbon a lot but you see i have no nice convenient copies of these texts that can be pulled out of the air in their entirety for free and read on a thing i carry in my pocket at all times, or i would

that is why one day i hope to own a proper ereader, just for Gibbon tbh

Hammett, Chandler, Ross Macdonald

i re-read hopscotch by cortazar a couple times when i was young. the pick your path conceit helped with that. i went through 'libra' and 'american tabloid' and some other jfk stuff again recently. i like putting together thematic lists.

there's a couple short stories i often revisit. 'lawns' by mona simpson is one of my favorites. 'empire' by richard ford and some others from 'rock springs.' i'll pick up jesus' son by johnson, 'the swimmer' and other cheever stuff, carver, anne beattie and lorrie moore too. often that's to try and figure out craft/structure stuff though.

i used to read 'norwegian wood' and 'the wind-up bird chronicle' quite regularly, but that was so long ago that the time in which i did seems relatively brief now.

I can stare at their spines in a sort of trance of thought-without-thoughts

this is intriguing but I have no idea what it means?

I'm interested in the snobbery of those folks who don't re-read childrens' books, and the weird fetishy character who only reread childrens' books.

jeez damned if you damned if you dont huh

On the very rare occasion, I'll re-read a 'classic' book I read in my teens or twenties to see if it still holds up ('great gatsby', 'on the road', 'rabbit run')

there's a couple short stories i often revisit. 'lawns' by mona simpson is one of my favorites. 'empire' by richard ford and some others from 'rock springs.' i'll pick up jesus' son by johnson, 'the swimmer' and other cheever stuff, carver, anne beattie and lorrie moore too. often that's to try and figure out craft/structure stuff though.

― the ilx meme is critical of that line of thought (lion in winter),

otm

I don't reread books - unless Tintin counts - but could see Dahl's Going Solo being a candidate.

To completely contradict that I realised I'm just about to start rereading Salinger's nine stories – I've forgotten everything about his books, but loved him as a teenager, and am rereading to search for clues about myself 20 years ago

btw, Tintin counts

I can stare at their spines in a sort of trance of thought-without-thoughts

I feel this. I guess the other reason for keeping books around is the thought of lending it to someone in the future - you know, sometimes you realise there's a **perfect** book for someone, and you want to be able to actually pass it on (because everyone forgets those conversations).

I would reread more if I was a faster reader - otherwise, yeah, it's just predictable short stuff like kids' books and comics and passages from PG Wodehouse. I did reread A Cold Case recently, as I'd completely forgotten everything about it, and I remember it being good - it's also v. short.

Perhaps re-reading is a childish behaviour? I remember rereading every music magazine I owned so many times when I was younger, I can still remember passages and jokes from early 90s issues of Select.

(Sorry don't mean childish negatively, I just mean, childish as in "I had more time then")

I don't really like encountering a new book as an audiobook; someone else's voices etc doesn't make it feel as though I'm actually reading. But listening to old favourites on audio can be great.

I've come back to Dubliners and the Gatsby of late. I suppose it's stuff you find nourishing on some level? So also: Borges, Ballard's short stories, JA Baker's The Peregrine, and Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

I frequently re-read Eliot, Bishop and farty old Larkin, too, if poetry counts.

poetry counts

I think the reason I do it less an adult is a sense that there's not enough time to read what's out there that I'm interested in.

Children don't worry about that; can't remember how many times I reread The Rats of Nimh...

i feel like re-reading is often deeper reading and there are lots of books i've already read that i like to keep interacting with

Curiously enough, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.

i've reread the bastille storming chapter of a tale of two cities on the last three bastille days.

neuromancer tilogy and the idoru trilogy and the various iain m banks books used to be quite regularly reread but since i got an ereader this has stopped. can't think of the last thing i reread.

(far from the madding crowd according to my records, 32 years between readings... return of the native, ditto.)

I do find myself staring at my library in a semi-trance state (usually while waiting for my son to finish taking a bath). I guess I keep books around for the reasons suggested - either to re-read them at leisure or loan them out - although I would add a third which is also that I like having stuff around for my kids to look through. It doesn't happen super-often but occasionally my daughter will express an interest in something (like my Smithsonian History of Newspaper Comics) and then I get to spend an hour reading Popeye or Little Nemo with her or whatever. And currently she's reading the copy of the Hobbit that I read when I was her age. So I enjoy this kind of "family curator" role, which includes being able to go to a shelf and look up stuff when asked about yiddish or ancient Rome or WWII or something.

I also partly feel preservationist about certain things, like the sf/fantasy stuff + comics. Preserving for who? idk. for stuff that brought me so much joy I feel some kind of weird obligation to protect and preserve them, like I owe it to these authors that never got their due in pay or respect.

I think it was Herman Hesse who asked the question about (I'm paraphrasing) whether it was 'better to read seven books once, or one book seven times'. I'm somewhere in the middle, but the older I get I'm more inclined towards the latter.

Unless that book is by Dan Brown or JK Rowling