This was predictable. With only a few weeks to go before my 2006 reading project starts officially, I’ve had a complete meltdown. I spent some quality time with Lenora Mattingly Weber (I Met a Boy I Used to Know) and Maud Hart Lovelace (Betsy and the Great World) and now I’m re-reading The Serial by Cyra McFadden (GREAT satire about Marin County in the 1970s).
The really strange thing is that my copy of The Serial fell apart years ago, so I’ve got only the first 24 chapters, not even half of the year. Meanwhile, I’ve also unearthed my copy of “Julie & Julia,” which I bought the week it was published — and promptly lost. I love memoirs that center on food.
Who re-reads? Who re-reads what? Why do you re-read? I think it’s like Paxil for me and I found the holidays rather stressful.
BTW, Laura, you’re not the least intellectual person here. Nope. Afterall, I don’t reread; I read then watch. How unintellectual (and lazy) is that?
I re-read The Lords Of Disipline — because parts of that book are so beautiful. i also re-read Elizabeth Peters — all of her books, I love that Amerlia Peabody! And I reread one of Greg’s book, because I know that one of the characters driving ability is based on mine … and I think “I so do NOT drive that way!”
The Greg to whom Marika refers is Greg Herren of New Orleans, a sweetheart who writes wonderful books.
Ohmy dear, I might might have something to send you…MY copy of The Serial which is completely intact. Former bay area resident that I am, I remember reading it IN serial form, just as I remember reading TALES OF THE CITY every day in the newspaper. Cornelia – that’s not number 5?
When C and I met via the internet like a year ago, by the way, we bonded immediately and one of our very early bonds was over A CHILD’S GARDEN OF GRASS. I still mourn that i did NOT buy that RECORD ALBUM of it that I saw once.
Tip on how to hide your grass: “Throwing it up in the air is very good for very short periods of time.”
Rereading. I hear people all the time going on about HOW can you REREAD tings and I try to explain how I’d a been locked up years ago without the comfort of rereading. I can’t always focus, that is, don’t always have the energy to read somehting new and have my brain absorb it, even if I can READ, so I find something that I loved before. But I have reread as long as I can remember; i don’t know HOW many times I read LAD: A DOG as a kid but, um, lots.
I reread to enjoy someone’s brilliance with language (Ursula Le Guin, Jim Sallis), to experience a wonderful story with people I care about (Kate Ross, Dana Stabenow, SJ Rozan, Jerry Healy, Jerry Doolittle). To laugh, maybe because I missed something the first time (or not) – Jasper Fforde, Terry Pratchett, Christopher Moore.
Laura please note – I have never READ most of those “intellectual” titles, nor wanted to. We’re in a Special Club here. A Very Special Club.
When all else fails I turn to cartoon and comic collections to read/re-read; Calvin and Hobbes, Foxtrot, Bruce McCall, Alison Bechdel. And prause be, Jef Mallett FINALLY has a Frazz collection out. Not to mention suicidal bunnies…
Do we ALL know the same people? There really ARE only 37 people in the universe aren’t there? Greg Herren – what a sweetie.
The short short list: All of James Herriot and George Orwell. Most of Joe Wambaugh.
And ‘Goshawk Squadron,’ by Derek Robinson; as soon as I find my raggedy copy of it.
–john–
My comfort re-reads are mostly kidlit favourites: Maud Hart Lovelace’s Betsy-Tacy books (especially the high school books and beyond), Lucy Maud Montgomery’s “The Blue Castle” and “Jane of Lantern Hill” (I’m not sure why those two as they weren’t particular favourites when I was a kid), Elizabeth Enright’s Melendy books, Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers books, Beverly Cleary’s teenage books (especially “Fifteen” and “The Luckiest Girl”), and Dodie Smith’s “I Capture the Castle.”
Other re-reads are generally prompted when I’m so blown away by the craft of a book that I flip back to the beginning as soon as I’m done and start over. I do it to savour the sentences and to try to figure out how the author managed to get me to feel the way the book made me feel. Recent examples of books that I re-read immediately on this basis are Kate Atkinson’s “Case Histories,” Ali Smith’s “The Whole Story and Other Stories,” and James Salter’s “Last Night.”
I probably reread “Heartburn” at least once a year – a bellweather of where I was and where I am. It used to be my favorite book, before I read “Miriam’s Kitchen” by Elizabth Ehrlich: a soulful, funny, so super smart memoir which weaves together two of my favorite subjects, food and Judaism. I also like to pick up “The Andy Warhol Diaries” and open it up and read wherever I land – great book to bring to bed and fall asleep to (tiny type + familiar subject = passed out Rosie).
Heartburn has great recipes, too — the vinaigrette and the linguine alla cecca in particular.
LOVE Heartburn, and still re-read Alice annually. The naivete is so STUNNING, no matter who wrote it. Plus, I can’t resist revisiting lines like the commune kid who blurts something like, “Daddy can’t help right now. He’s busy humping Carla.”
I confess I have not actually READ Maupin. Oh, the shame…
I so do not belong in this group, having never read the vast majority of books listed here (exceptions are SJ Rozan, Dana Stabenow, Elizabeth Peters). I re-read all the time. A line or character gets stuck in my head (just like a song) and I just have to go back and re-read the book or series. Whenever there is a new Robert Crais or SJ Rozan or Laura Lippman out, that means starting the series all over again, so that I can track the character development. OC, I know. And I’ve just got to read them in order. So now you know exactly how my bookshelves are arranged, too. It drives my husband nuts (another good reason to do it).
I re-read parts of Pride and Prejudice and of Jane Eyre when I am stressed. And speaking of P&P- my daughter is right- Keira Knightly smiles and laughs too much as Elizabeth in the new film.
I tend not to reread that often. Its primarily because I look at my TBR pile and realize how behind I am with the new stuff. But there are books that I’d love to reread if I had the time. Things like the first book in long running series so that I can remember how the character started out.
Speaking of Julie and Julia, I got the audio version of this book off iTunes. I’m planning on listening to it on an upcoming trip.
Books I reread at least once a year: “Jane Eyre,” “Marjorie Morningstar,” “The Moviegoer,” and “Possession.” “Pride and Prejudice” and “Sense and Sensibility” are also favorites, but not mandatory annual reads. It’s like dropping in on friends I haven’t seen in a while, and the wonderful thing is that they never have new terrible news.
Come to think of it, here it is almost December and I haven’t reread “Possession” yet this year…
I’m not a big rereader either, but like Andrea, I never get tired of rereading Jane Austen’s P &P and Emma and Persuasion. I just got a copy of Mansfield Park and don’t think I’ve ever read that! I’ll find out soon though. P & P ( A & E version)is the best..just saw it again on TV last week.
What have I read more than once? The books that pop immediately into my coffee-deprived cranium include The Things They Carried, The Big Sleep, Maltese Falcon, Heart of Darkness, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and a bunch of plays, House of Blue Leaves being the one that might not be on everyone’s short list, but should be.
I also re-read Austen often. Pride and Prejudice was the first novel that my husband and I read aloud to each other. I also love Emma and Northanger Abbey–guess I like the flawed heroines best.
As for mysteries, I re-read Josephine Tey and Dorothy L. Sayers, particularly her later work which includes the Harriet Vane character in novels such as Gaudy Night. Maltese Falcon definitely.
I reread most of Conrad very often, particularly The Secret Agent, Secret Sharer, Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim. Also love O’Brien’s The Things They Carried–particularly nowadays.
I also like to re-listen to books on CD. For these, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings are what I return to most often, but I love anything by Dickens and Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca on CD.
A trend is evolving: I am the least intellectual person on this blog, based on my re-reading titles.
I don’t reread many books because I have so many books I want to read the first time. But, one book that I have read several times is my favorite book of all time–The Cider House Rules by John Irving. The writing is wonderful–beautiful, funny, and rewarding.
My absolute favorite thing to do though is to read a book then watch the movie! Try it. So cool. Of course some movie adaptations are better than others, but it is so fun to watch the movie right after you’ve finished reading it.
I reread stuff all the time if I enjoyed it first time through. In fact, I can’t understand why (aside from time issues) some people take the attitude that because they’ve read something once (or seen a movie once) that they don’t want to look at it again. Many things improve on subsequent readings/viewings as familiarity with the material means you’re free to pick up on subtler things that you missed first time around because you were either concentrating on understanding what was going on or because you were reading fast enough not to be picking up on every single word.
I reread more graphic novels these days than prose fiction, simply because they’re much quicker reads, but if I enjoy a story I’ll always go back to it given the chance.
If I didn’t, well, I wouldn’t keep the books. I’d sell them or stick to taking stuff out of libraries and save myself the money.
I reread for comfort too. Personal favorites are 84 Charing Cross Road (I just introduced my boyfriend to the movie over the weekend, and he loved it–I keeping him!), almost anything by Charlotte Macleod, the Deborah Knott series by Margaret Maron, and Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin. I also reread just to visit with the characters again, or to review a series I’m returning to after a long break. Despite a huge TBR list, I add rereading into the mix.
THE SERIAL! Ahhhhh… Harvey and Kate, ten-speed bikes, Valium, hot tubs, sprouts, encounter groups…
A recent invitation’s got me thinking about best re-reads first snuck from my parents’ shelves, and that one’s truly iconic.
Blogger Mark Farley, AKA Notting Hill’s “Bookseller to the Stars,” is collecting writers’ reading list suggestions for a proposed charity book project: “My Top Five for The Dyslexia Institute: A Collection of Bookstore Recommendations.” He’s asked that this invite be passed along, and I’d be happy to forward details to anyone interested in checking it out.
Mark suggested I list faves set in San Francisco. Since I’ve only lived in the Bay Area for a few years, I asked if it would be okay to do “The Top Five Books I’d Recommend to Any Persons Trying to Comprehend the Long-Term Effects of a Radical, Hippie-Freak, Quasi-Feral Childhood, if They Were to Keep Insisting on Pursuit of this Ridiculous Goal Despite my Best-Reasoned Arguments Against Their Even Attempting It.”
So far I’m thinking:
1. A Child’s Garden of Grass: THE OFFICIAL HANDBOOK FOR MARIJUANA USERS (Jack S. Margolis, Richard Clorfene)
2. Living on the Earth (Alicia Bay Laurel)
3. Be Here Now (Baba Ram Dass)
and
4. Go Ask Alice (supposedly the teen diary of “Anonymous,” though the real author looks to have been a Mormon psychologist named Beatrice Sparks).
Five is still a tossup–Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers? Hunter S. Thompson? Euell Gibbons? But now THE SERIAL’s pulling ahead.
Laura, if you’d like to read it again in full, I’ve got a spare I can pop in the mail.
Happy All the Time! As I type this, I have just removed from the oven the Gourmet cookbook’s brownies recipe, which was adapted from Colwin’s adaptation of Katharine Hepburn’s brownies. Colwin was a favorite writer, one who died much too young. For other fans, I highly recommend Lisa Gruenwald’s Whatever Makes You Happy.
And I am thrilled that Cornelia has provided some evidence for my long-held skepiticism about Go Ask Alice. I’ve re-read it constantly, looking for the “proof” that it was not a real girl’s diary.
Finally, Cornelia, what about Maupin? Too obvious? I re-read him, too. And I think The Night LIstener is a must-read for those who get obsessed with what’s true/factual.
I wish I had the time to reread, but I have a feeling one of those jags will be descending on me soon. And if so, it’ll be Lucy Maud Montgomery (first three Anne novels, KILMENY OF THE ORCHARD, the short stories and especially THE BLUE CASTLE) possibly Elizabeth Smart’s BY GRAND CENTRAL STATION I SAT DOWN AND WEPT (if I can handle it) and perhaps my all-time favorite children’s book ever, Tetsuko Kuroyanagi’s TOTTO-CHAN: THE LITTLE GIRL AT THE WINDOW, which I think I’ve read about a hundred times and I never stop loving it.
At the risk of being boring and redundant, Pride & Prejudice and the rest of Austen (particularly Lady Susan when I need a quick fix). Given how many times Austen appears just on this list, no wonder they keep making new video versions.
I’m probably the only person my age that never read GO Ask Alice-now I think maybe I didn’t miss that much.
I used to re-read, but now have no time other than to just read for the first time. Although on a recent trip to Massachusetts to the annual Crimebake, I got an audio CD of “The Great Gatsby” and almost missed my exit I was so caught up in it again. I also have an obsession with anything having to do with Henry VIII and while I rarely re-read the biographies, I usually find new ones to immerse myself in.
I’m curious about Cornelia’s GO ASK ALICE revelation, since that book scared the shit out of me when I was 14 and I plan to give it to my daughter in five years to scare the shit out of her, too.
Here’s a link from Snopes: http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/askalice.asp
The part that always made me skeptical were those pages somehow saved her second running-away episode — some of which, IIRC, were alleged to be written on sanitary napkins. At any rate, it seemed unlikely that those pages would have been kept.
I just found a box of books that I read in high school that I am getting ready to reread (hopefully I’ll take more away from them this time, since no one is FORCING me to read and analyze!). The list includes A Tale of Two Cities, Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, & Return of the Native. I have to admit, though, that I was probably one of the few in my classes that actually enjoyed reading them the first time. I have also started rereading In Cold Blood, but am taking that one much slower than most of the books that I read. I think it has to do with the fact that the overall tale is so dark, I can only take a litle at a time. One of my favorite books to reread is Michener’s Hawaii. I pull it out every few years and never get tired of it.
There are easily a dozen books I’ve reread dozens of times. I always figure that if the book isn’t worth rereading, it wasn’t worth reading in the first place.
I reread constantly, mostly anything written by Elswyth Thane. Her books are long out of print but excellent historical fiction. I’ve also read And Ladies of the Club numerous times. I went through a phase where I read Gone With the Wind at least once a year.
Reread? I can’t keep up with my TBR pile! But okay, I confess-when I get fed up with nothing that grabs me, I pull out Maugham and Cain or Le Carre. As for Maupin, I couldn’t get the Chron fast enough to read ‘Tales’, and The Serial? I knew those people.
And I just read GWTW for the first time this fall!!
I reread “comfort” mysteries and thrillers: Ruth Rendell’s Wexford books, Dick Francis, early Elmore Leonard, early Spenser.
James Herriot–joy to have read those books to my kids these past couple of years.
Gerald Durrell’s purely wonderful My Family and Other Animals and his animal-collecting books–which my father read to me, and which first inspired me to try for an itinerant life.
One Hundred Years of Solitude. Pride and Prejudice!
Lord of the Rings every five to ten years…though with the movies, and the long, slow process of reading it to the kids this year (and last!), I may have had enough for a few decades.
Oh, and James H. Schmitz’s The Witches of Karres and John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids….
And–
I’m so not literary, and an inveterate re-reader. Sometimes I just want the comfort of spending time with an old friend; sometimes I need to remember what’s already happened in a series in anticipation of a new book (I read really quickly, so don’t retain a whole lot). I only keep re-read books these days, so a glance at the shelves tells the story: Guy Gavriel Kay (love him, love him, love him!); some Mercedes Lackey (but only a small bit of her total output); all of Laura Lippman, of course; all of Laurie R. King; Le Guin’s Wizard of Earthsea series; Lewis’ Narnia; Stanmeyer’s “And Ladies of the Club”; lots of Georgette Heyer (“The Grand Sophie” and “Fredericka” are annual reads); David Weber’s Honor Harrington series . . . there are a few more, but that’s it off the top of my head.
Was “Serial” the movie with Martin Mull, and the daughter who joined the cult? For Bay Area flavor, I also like “The Fifth Sacred Thing” (by Starhawk? something like that) for its sort of new-age-hippie-feel-good mysticism and “Ecotopia” because I’ve always thought Northern California would be much better off without LA
I have to confess to not having read most of Maupin, either, except his gym card, and I was really trying not to, but mine was in the same drawer as his, and for some reason they were right next to each other most of the time. I also used to live a block from him and see him on the street now and then.
I am a addicted rereader. GWTW; Little Women; And Ladies of the Club; A Prayer for Owen Meany; Harry Potter; LOTR.