What books have you read twice?

So many to re-read, and so many to read for the first time - I need more than 24 hours in the day!

Have re-read most of Daphne du Maurier, Jane Austen, John Buchan, 'The Unconquerable' by Helen MacInnes, 'We didn't mean to go to sea' by Arthur
Ransome, in fact, anything by him, Catherine Gaskin, and the absolutely wonderful ' The Guernsey Literary and potato peel pie' by Mary Shaffer. I really do recommend this one.

Never leave the house without a book, feel 'undressed' without one!

I've read Great Expectations, Thirty-Nine Steps and Treasure Island more than twice.

"The Passion" and "Sexing the Cherry"

Both by Jeanette Winterson. Such wonderful use of language. I also love the novels of Angela Carter, they would always introduce me to at least one new word!

Ziska
A friend has just recommended 'Cutting for Stone' by Abraham Verghese.
I'd never heard of it.

Oh I'm sooo excited about your post grannyknot i'v never met anyone who loved this poet. My very very favourite of his is 'people' starts " No people are uninteresting" I sometimes read it once or twice a week. It is kept open on top of my printer. Even if I'm not printing I can see the book from my landing and will pop in just to read it again. Each time time I read it I understand it more. Thank you so much for sharing

Buster's Diary has been mentioned. I have read 'A Yorkshire Boyhood' by Roy Hattersley many times. This boyhood was spent in Sheffield and he grew up a few miles away from where I lived. I actually met him once as I went out with a cricketing friend of his for a couple of months.

Buster is a lovely book if you love dogs and when my MIL was dying- the last three days and we spent hours at the bed side holding her hand - I read Buster's Diary again. It was the only book I could face and as MIL was in a coma and the hours were long, it got me through them.

I am an avid reader and belong to 4 book groups as I usually read 2 books a week.

The first book I re-read was Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy. Having read it first as a teeenager, I re-read it as a new mum in the 70's.

Then, because of study, work and family commitments didn't read more than half a dozen books a year for a long time.

Since 2000 - major life change - I have had more time to indulge and I have re-read 3 books.

Being Dead by Jim Crace

The Glass Room by Simon Mawer ( 3 times ! )

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese.

All very different and I'll leave you to look them up to see why they are such incredible stories.

BerylBee.
I know just how you feel. In my case it is because I am now so old. I only buy a book if I really cannot be without it. I have rather a lot of books already waiting to be read so I alternate one re-read with something new. My most recent buy was Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Cafe afer seeing the film for the first time recently on TV. It is now waiting for me to finish The Lives of the Brontes Through Their Letters, a fascinating read if you are interested in the family but so sad, they all died so young. Charlotte's letters are very moving.

What a lovely thread.
Reading these posts has triggered lots of happy memories of books I've loved in the past.
However, I have to say I don't re-read books. I suppose my thoughts are that there are so many wonderful books I haven't read, that I can't spare the time to re-read ones I have !

Not only am I a keen re-reader, I am a re-listener. I love audio books - someone reading a good story to me while I tackle the mundane. Brilliant. Top of both charts is Middlemarch. There always seems to be something not read or heard before.

This re -reading is a bit of a mine field.Read The Rings when I was about 30 and cried when I had finished it as i realised there was NO MORE! When I read it again years later I found it very self indulgent and faintly boring. How sad, should have left well alone.

Gone with the Wind and Anne Karenina and most of Margaret Drabble's earlier novels.

I'm on a bit of a re-reading splurge at the moment. I love rereading Jane Austen as comfort reading. Just read Hardy's 'Jude the Obscure' and found it as painful, maybe more so, as last time. NOW to impress! Just started 'War and Peace'! Haven't read it since I was about 20 when it had a massive impression on me. I want to see if time and age have made a difference in my understanding. And if I still leave out the war bits! It all fits on my I-pad nicely. And of course all those children's books!!!!

I've been meaning to re-read 'Catherine' by Anya Seton which I adored in my teens. I bought a second hand copy on Amazon but the print is very small and I'm so accustomed to reading from a large-ish font on my Kindle that I'm not sure i can cope with small print - a newspaper is bad enough. Eye test time, I think!

Lilygran, forgot those! How could I! 'Tiger in the Smoke' my favourite.

Margery Allingham

loads, really, but some only when I have nothing else available.

However, in a Desert Island Discs type scenario, I would go for two Jeanette Winterson books, namely "Sexing The Cherry" and "The Passion" .

I love to re-read my favourite books, Dickens, Austen, the Brontes. I also have one or two 'comfort books' that I know so well I can dip into and enjoy a few pages at any time. The Diary of Thomas Turner, an 18th century shop keeper in the village of East Hoathly in Sussex is probably the one I return to time and time again. I brings the lives of the people around him so close and makes me feel I really understand how they lived then.
I also have a few funny books I treasure, the Map and Lucia stories of E. F> Benson, The Diary fo a Nobody by G. and W. Grossmith and even the occasional William by Richmal Crompton which were written for adults rather than children. In fact I have to discipline myself to alternate new books with a re-read otherwise I would just not get round to reading anything new.

I have just finished re-reading Pillars of the earth for the third time,I feel myself actually being there in that time and got so engrossed with the tale no one dared speak to me when I picked up the book.
To Kill a Mockingbird is my next re-read I saw the film on late night TV a couple of weeks ago and searched for my copy and will start reading it again.

All Thomas Hardy's books, especially The Mayor of Casterbridge.
And almost all of Daphne du Maurier's novels.
And Little Women; endlessly re-read when I was young, and still love it.

When people said how much they enjoy Jane Austen and would have liked to have lived then, I always said I would have been the one cleaning the grates. Someone has now written a novel about Pride and Prejudice as seen from the point of view of the servants.
I used to take Wuthering Heights on holiday with me every year. Yorkshire born and bred.
The first book we read in high school was Jane Eyre. I used to live in a big house with my bedroom in the attic, and a walk-in cupboard on the landing outside my bedroom door. Definitely Grace Poole territory. I slept with the light on for years. Still can't watch the film on my own.

ALL the books by Ngaio Marsh and Philip Pullman.

Austen and Dickens many times, the best known Brontes a few times, Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu twice, Arthur Ransome too often to count, Mary Stewart's and Rosemary Sutcliff's Arthurian novels, Dorothy L. Sayers' Peter Wimsey novels, Sherlock Holmes.....

Me too, Galen.

Reread even!