Are there any books you re-read frequently?

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