BS: Books You've Read More Than Once

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From:
Date: 05 Dec 05 - 09:22 AM

Hmm..
Alas Babylon by Pat Frank
The Old Man and the Boy by Robert Ruark
The Drifters by James Michenor
Lord of the Ring Trilogy by Tolkien
Gabriella, Clove and Cinammon by Jorge Amado

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 05 Dec 05 - 08:05 AM

Just remembered another -- and it's due for rereading and probably also eminently suitable for reading aloud. "O Ye Jigs and Juleps!" by Virginia Cary Hudson

Now all I have to do is find my copy.

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: GUEST,ivor
Date: 30 Nov 05 - 05:27 AM

I'm also puzzled that there's not much Shakespeare , given that so many, rightly sing his praises on the Shakespeare thread

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: GUEST,ivor
Date: 30 Nov 05 - 04:48 AM

I'm intrigued that of these interesting lists, such a high percentage is of fiction. And that with the incomprehensibly vast amount of interesting stuff to read (not to mention working, music, films, plays, paintings,seeing people) that there is time to read thru anyone's works over and over. Many congratulations.
I play Mahler enormously.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: bill kennedy
Date: 29 Nov 05 - 11:15 AM

BTW Rapaire, I also work in a library in Cleveland! and have more books than I can fit in our small house, most are now in storage till I figure out some shelving and finish the remodeling. I do an Irish radio program on WRUW.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: bill kennedy
Date: 29 Nov 05 - 11:07 AM

all the shorts stories by Raymond Carver, numerous times each
and much of Alice Munro as well
all of Edgar Allen Poe

as to others above, Black Elk and other Neihardt'
Seven Arrows
Ginger Man
Master and Margarita
Giants in the Earth
Last Night's Fun - well worth rereading a couple of times
Shakespeare of Course
and Thurber
S J Perleman
Jack Kerouac - all of his
Dow Mossman's 'Stones of Summer'
etc. can't write anymore, must go read something!

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: bill kennedy
Date: 29 Nov 05 - 10:50 AM

Bob - I've since read remarks by one of Steinbeck's sons that he was painfully shy and actually spoke with no-one on that entire trip, all fictional recreations of what he might have said, etc. and not very well written at that.

I'm not remembereing everything, but don't want to forget

How Green Was My Valley and its sequels by Richard Llewellyn
The Green Child by Herbert Read
Lovely is the Lee and others by Robert Gibbings
Peig by Peig Sayers
The Islandman trans. by Robin Flower
all of Hugh Lofting, many times as a child and a parent, especially 'The Twilight of Magic'
William Heath Robinson's 'Adventures of Uncle Lubin' and others

too many to remember

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Nov 05 - 06:12 PM

moongoddess - Tom Wolfe wrote "The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test" ... Kesey was one of the principle characters, but he didn't write it.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Deckman
Date: 28 Nov 05 - 05:45 PM

To Bill Kennedy ... I certainly agree with you that "Travels With Charlie", by John Steinbeck, was not his best, by a long shot. I've always felt that he wrote one book too many. You're the first one that's ever agreed with me on that point. ARE YOU MARRIED?? NO, NO. Wait, I just remembered ... I AM MARRIED!!!

Forget I asked that! CHEERS, Bob(deckman)Nelson

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: bill kennedy
Date: 28 Nov 05 - 04:57 PM

Islandia by Austin Tappan Wright

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: bill kennedy
Date: 28 Nov 05 - 04:53 PM

I've also read all of Karl May (in English Translation) a couple of times, and of course much of Bradbury, though I found on re-reading his 'Dandelion Wine' it doesn't really hold up, more for adolescents I think. I also went throught the Verne phase and Stevenson, and H G Wells, and have read them all a couple of times at least over the years.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: MudGuard
Date: 28 Nov 05 - 04:43 PM

In no special order (and probably not complete):

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien's Hobbit + Lord of the Rings
Douglas Adams' Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (all 5 volumes of the 4 -volume trilogy)
Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently's Holistic Agency
Douglas Adams' Long Dark Teatime
George Orwell's 1984
George Orwell's Animal Farm
Herbert George Wells' Time Machine
Herbert George Wells' War of the Worlds
Herbert George Wells' Invisible Man
Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Alex Haley's Roots
Robert Louis Stephenson's Treasure Island
Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe
almost all books by Jules Verne (in their German translation)
Michael Crichton's Andromeda Strain
Tom Clancy's Hunt for the Red October
almost all books by Karl May (I was young, I needed the money ;-))

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: bill kennedy
Date: 28 Nov 05 - 04:40 PM

much of Faulkner

certainly Ulysses many times, though I am less impressed as time goes on, as well as The Dubliners

various translations of Homer, Iliad and Odyssey

much of Dostoyevsky in translation

don't forget Flann O' Brien's The Hard Life and the Poor Mouth, both readable over and over again

some H Rider Haggard and Ernst Bramah and Talbot Mundy and Kipling

Les Miserables I read every other year if not every year, just so I don't forget, and not the abridged version, don't bother with that, just read the whole thing, is my recommendation

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 28 Nov 05 - 04:21 PM

Thnaks for correcting me, Bill. You are right, of course. I'm glad that someone else has read the book.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: bill kennedy
Date: 28 Nov 05 - 04:18 PM

Bhagavad Gita
Old and New Testaments
Koran
Pillow Book of Sei Shonagan
all of Lafcadio Hearn's writing on Japan
USA by Dos Passos
Studs Lonigan
A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean
Disapperances by Howard Frank Mosher

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: bill kennedy
Date: 28 Nov 05 - 03:34 PM

'Diary of an Old Man' by Chaim Bermant
both 'The Home Place' and 'The Works of Love' by Wright Morris

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: bill kennedy
Date: 28 Nov 05 - 03:29 PM

both translations of the same Proust I have read each more than once, 'Remembrances of Things Past' and 'In Search of Lost Time'

'Life on the Mississippi', Twain at his best. I reread 'Huck Finn' recently and thought the first hundred pages or so are the only ones worth reading. The last half of the book is junk IMHO.

'Famine' by O'Flaherty
'Hunger' by Hamsun

I may remember others, but these are great books.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: bill kennedy
Date: 28 Nov 05 - 03:19 PM

I have read much of the above numerous times, except for LOTR, which I couldn't bother with the first time and have never gone back to. Likewise CS Lewis, on re-reading 'Travels with Charley' I found it the least interesting of Steinbeck's work, he would not be remembereed if that were his only book, just this side of worthless.

I mus correct Jerry's first post, though, because it is a wounderful, important book. 'Call it Sleep' is by Henry Roth, not Philip Roth.

I would also recommend the trilogy 'Scot's Quair' by Lewis Grassic Gibbon (pseud. of James Leslie Mitchell) but not for the same reasons, just because it's been forgotten and I find it readable over and over again.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Cluin
Date: 28 Nov 05 - 02:57 PM

Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars I'll have to dig up and read again, now that I learn there's a movie in the works (scheduled for release next year). Haven't read that one since my early teens.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 28 Nov 05 - 11:22 AM

refresh

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: moongoddess
Date: 26 Nov 05 - 11:09 PM

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Ken Kesey.
    Lived down the road from him when i lived in Eugene, Oregon and taught in Springfield, Oregon. One of the best!

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Carly
Date: 26 Nov 05 - 09:59 PM

Thank you so much for this thread, Jerry. Reading these lists reminds me that I'm among kindred spirits, the addicted-to-books kind.

I generally keep only books I think I might read again, and we have thousands, but there are some I try to reread every few years, while ignoring the piles I haven't gotten to yet.

Jane Austen
Dorothy Sayers - the Lord Peter Wimsey series
Hilton-Lost Horizons
Kipling- particularly Captains Courageous, Kim and "Baa, Baa, Black
    Sheep"
Brunner- Stand on Zanzibar
Clarke- Childhood's End
Heinlein-The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is my favorite, but I've reread everything except his last few books
Kaye- The Far Pavilions
Shute-A Town Like Alice
Renault- The King Must Die, The Bull From the Sea
Stewart- The Arthurian Books
Baum, and later Thompson- the Oz books, read in my childhood,and
    read aloud to nieces and nephews, our son, and anyone else
    interested
Doyle- Sherlock Holmes
Mitchener- The Source, Hawaii
Schimtz- the Witches of Karres
Bristow- Calico Palace
White- The Once and Future King
Blish- the Cities in Flight books
Bester- the Demolished Man
Twain- probably I've reread A Connecticut Yankee most often, but all of his books I've read at least twice
Dickens- A Tale of Two Cities
Baroness I-have-to-go-look-it-up-because-I-can't-spell-it 's the Scarlet Pimpernel
There are more, but I have to go read now.

Clearly, "Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold" sums up my approach to books.

Carly Gewirz

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 26 Nov 05 - 05:36 PM

Way cool! My first 100th post ever. Is that chillin', or what?

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 26 Nov 05 - 05:35 PM

Many volumes of Calvin & Hobbes, Peanuts, The Far Side and more recently, Get Fuzzy.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 26 Nov 05 - 03:29 PM

I also forgot to mention the wonderful "Bachelor Brothers Bed and Breakfast" series by Bill Richardson. I also read those again aloud to Tom.

Some books just don't work as read alouds -- even ones you think might.

But Harry Potter and Bachelor Brothers Bed and Breakfast are both fine read aloud series.

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: fat B****rd
Date: 26 Nov 05 - 02:39 PM

All Sherlock Holmes stories.
All Robert B. Parker's Spenser stories.
Most of Milligan's war memoirs.
Most of George Melly's Autobiographies.
Jack's Return Home (Get Carter) by Ted Lewis.
Moby Dick (short version)
Moulded In Earth by Richard Vaughan.
The fist four "Harry Palmer" books by Len Deighton.
Most of the Morse books.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Deda
Date: 26 Nov 05 - 01:52 PM

OK, I'm very curious. I'd never heard of "My Very Own Special Particular Private and Personal Cat" before, and I searched for it on both Amazon and Alibris, seems it can't be bought for less than about $45 or so. My local (Boulder, CO) public library doesn't have it. So could one of the re-readers please give me a little info, what kind of book is it??

Many thanks.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Nov 05 - 01:53 PM

Proof read proof read proof read. . .

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Nov 05 - 01:53 PM

Today while listening to a rebroadcast Diane Rehm intereview about endganged birds I was reminded of one I've read several times--to my children.

Charlotte's Web

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 25 Nov 05 - 12:07 PM

Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
Of Mice & Men -    "
Iliad and Odyssey - not really re-read, but sampling various
                   translations, most recently Fagles'.
Rivers of Glory ) - F. Van Wyck Mason. A tetrology of novels set
Stars on the Sea)   during the War for Independence. The other two
                   titles escape me.
Jewish Antiquities - Flavius Josephus
Rime of the Ancient Mariner - S. T. Coleridge. I read this (aloud)
                   every 2-3 years, and have since Jr. H.S.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 25 Nov 05 - 08:01 AM

How did this manage to fall off the list?

The other more recent rereads include reading the entire Harry Potter series aloud to Curmudgeon. Started while he was recovering from his heart surgery last year. Right now we're almost finished with Halfblood Prince, but that's a first time read.

I'd forgotten how much fun it is to read aloud. (But another good one for that in my list above is "My Very Own Special Particular Private and Personal Cat".

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Charley Noble
Date: 24 Nov 05 - 10:53 AM

Then there is "Cold Comfort Farm," Stella Gibbons witty literary parody of various authors who wrote novels where the heroine tidies up someone's dysfunctional life. But I always enjoyed as a straight story as well.

No one has mentioned John Collier's fine book of "witty, ironic and subtly lethal" short stories entitled "Fancies & Goodnights." I used to find them hysterically funny. Maybe it's time to reread them? My friends and I at college used to enjoy readings these to one another. It was our early version of a wireless network.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 24 Nov 05 - 09:45 AM

It's also probably about time to reread Allan Villiers' "Falmouth for Orders" -- I may have already reread it, but the rereading was lost in the mists of prehistory.

Oh! And I forgot to include "The Haunted Bookshop" and "Parnassus On Wheels" (and anythng else I can lay my hands on) by Christopher Morley.

Despite the immense stack of books next to the bed (and on the stairs and in bookcases -- what! bookcases?!?) that need to be read the FIRST time, this thread is reminding me of all sorts of books that need to have a reread scheduled.

And I'm only 2000 years behind in my reading now (and they keep publishing more; sigh).

Linn
The Book Mavin of Nottingham

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Charley Noble
Date: 23 Nov 05 - 09:13 PM

Linn-

Thanks for reminding me to re-read Mary Stewart's Arthurian Trilogy. It should hold up well.

Then for the past five years I've been trying to work my way through Hamish Maclaren's THE PRIVATE OPINIONS OF A BRITISH BLUEJACKET and I've just resumed reading. I think I'm just beginning to decode it. It's written inlower deck naval dialect and phonetically spelled, with occasional puncuation.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 23 Nov 05 - 07:17 PM

Mostly I feel I have too much to read the first time and not enough time to reread well-loved books, but then I find myself ambushed by a reread and really have no choice in the matter but to lay back and enjoy it.

Sixteen Pleasures by Robert Helenga
Possession by A.S. Byatt
Mistress Masham's Repose by T.H. White
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Lord Peter Wimsey series by Dorothy L. Sayers
Pigs Is Pigs by Ellis Parker Butler
Beachcombing for a Shipwrecked God - Joe Coomer
My Very Own Special Particular Private and Personal Cat by Sandol Stoddard
Richard Halliburton books
Mary Stewart's Arthurian Trilogy
The first 4 or 5 Dune books
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy "Trilogy" by Douglas Adams
I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith
Travis McGee series
The Harrad Experiment by Robert H. Rimmer
Tristram Shandy by Lawrence Sterne -- Actually, I've never FINISHED it; I keep getting wrapped up in the language and then I don't get back to it until I have to start at the beginning again.
Heinlein's Lazarus Long books
How to Save Your Own Life - Erica Jong
Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macauley
All of Robertson Davies (but, like Sinsull, the Deptford Trilogy most often)

And now, I guess, you've all just reminded me to make time to read a couple of these again and a couple on other people's lists!

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: JennyDeckner
Date: 23 Nov 05 - 05:05 PM

Wonder Boys - Michael Chabon
Lolita - Nabokov
Homeland - Sam Lipsyte
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
the various plays, books, and essays of Tony Kushner

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Cluin
Date: 23 Nov 05 - 09:48 AM

Bester's "Stars My Destination"
Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces"
Shelley's "Frankenstein"
Stoker's "Dracula"
Myers' "Silverlock" and "The Moon's Fire-Eating Daughter"
Gaarder's "Sophie's World"
Newman's "Company of Adventurers"
Berton's "Vimy"
Card's "Alvin Maker" series
Lanier's "Hiero" books
Shea's "Nifft the Lean"
Cousteau's "The Silent World"
Somerville & Ross' "The Irish R.M."
Herriot's "All Creatures Great and Small"
Asimov's "Foundation Trilogy"
Tolkien

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Charley Noble
Date: 23 Nov 05 - 09:29 AM

Hey, chalk up another thread that I managed to kill!

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Charley Noble
Date: 22 Nov 05 - 09:09 PM

I hate to admit how many times I've re-read Patrick O'Brian's Captain Aubrey series. I definitely encourage those who are re-reading their Hornblower books to try something more substantial. The action is great but incidental to the word play between the captain and his best friend the surgeon.

Other books? Well, here's a short list:

HMS Ulysses - the first war story I ever read which didn't have a happy ending

War Birds (Diary of the Unknown Aviator) - the second war story I ever read which didn't have a happy ending

The Castle by Kafka because I still haven't figured it out

Cockalorum by Hamish Maclaren because I'm still trying to figure him out

American: The Life Story of a Great Indian

Anything by Ursula LeGuin

The Crock of Gold because one cannot predict where this tale will go

Hard Times because reality is much stranger than fiction

The Man Who Was Thursday because you never know who you can trust!

The Magus because the mystery still remains

Time & Again because if we just could focus hard enough we could shift to another time and place

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: bobad
Date: 22 Nov 05 - 08:33 PM

Yes Borstal Boy, one of my faves.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 22 Nov 05 - 06:04 PM

I used to read A Christmas Carol every Christmas to conjure up the magic of that Christmas Spirit. Haven't read it in years, though. Moby Dick I have re-read about every seven years, each time as if I were taking yet another voyage on the doomed Pequod..."Call me Ishmael."
I recently re-read Hesse's Steppenwolf and Sartre's The Age of Reason, and prior to the first Trilogy movie, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, although I consider Tolkein good entertainment rather than great literature. Certain Shakespeare plays I have read numerous times, including Henry V, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Midsummer Night's Dream,, and The Tempest.

LEJ

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: GUEST,Ard Mhacha.
Date: 22 Nov 05 - 02:38 PM

The Green Fool, and Tarry Flynn, by Patrick Kavanagh, Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan, and The Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Diaz.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: gnu
Date: 22 Nov 05 - 02:28 PM

Trinity, by Leon Uris.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: SINSULL
Date: 22 Nov 05 - 12:17 PM

Everything by Robertson Davies but most often The Deptford Trilogy.

A Prayer For Owen Meany

Atlas Shrugged

Jane Eyre

Wuthering Heights

Song Of The Dodo

Jack Finney's "Time" books

Biographies of Sir Richard Burton

The Giving Tree

Ferdinand The Bull

I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream????? I haven't thought of that in years.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: GUEST,James
Date: 22 Nov 05 - 11:42 AM

Everything by Virginia Woolf. I read the Waves every year.; A stunning book. Wuthering Heights, Emma by Jane Austin. The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy. Fifth Business by Robertson Davies. The House on the Strand by Daphne DuMaurier, A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman, Rob Roy by Walter Scott, Many of the Hornblower boos and a lot of C.S. Lewis.Goodbye To All That by Robert Graves, The Goshawk by T. H. White, Dead Souls by Gogol . Oh soooooo many, I like these threads because I get a great list of what to read next. Thank you all very much.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Tannywheeler
Date: 21 Nov 05 - 04:24 PM

In the late 1950s I was attending a school in NYC. 8th grade, I think. Mondays & Wednesdays we had French class for an hour. Tuesdays & Thursdays we had German. (On Fridays, no lang. class, we got out of school an hour early.) I did well in German, but the French instructor was awful. He spent the whole hour with his back to the class, writing irregular verbs on the blackboard. That year, only reading in French class(book under desktop) I managed to go all the way through Huck Finn 3 times. And in April was able to compose my French essay quickly. 4 words--"Le printemps et ici."--as I remember. I had also previously read Tom Sawyer, and have gone back to both later.   I love Barbara Kingsolver, too. Her stuff is rich--like cooking with full cream and butter, instead of skim milk and veggie oil.                            Tw

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: alison
Date: 21 Nov 05 - 01:27 AM

Once a year or as often as possible

Daphen Du Maurier - Frenchman's Creek (excellent escapism) & Jamaica Inn
C.S. Lewis - the Narnia Chronicles
Peter Mayle - a Year in Provence (+ the various sequels)
Marion Zimmer Bradley - the Mists of Avalon

I must be one of the few never to have read LOTR - couldn't get past all tha "aragorn son of arathorn............ blah blah blah" stuff...

maybe I should try again

slainte

alison

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Deda
Date: 20 Nov 05 - 11:34 PM

I'm currently re-reading both Hemingway (Old Man and the Sea) and Jane Austen -- Pride & Prejudice. I have the week off and am hoping to re-read quite a few of hers. I haven't re-read her for many years, I have to ration myself because once I start in on anything by her I become largely non-functional.

I've re-read a lot of things that I was teaching. I've taught home-schoolers a lot of Latin so I've re-read quite a lot of Caesar and Virgil, plus some general lit stuff - including 1984, Catch22, and (one worth re-reading often) Huck Finn. I've re-read Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Sherlock Holmes, Alice & Through the Looking Glass, many children's books. I love re-reading children's books. Reread All the King's Men but I think I could re-read it again. I've read Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land twice, am probably due for a second reading.

I've re-read some parts of the Bible and never read other parts. Ditto Shakespeare, haven't read all the histories even once.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: TIA
Date: 20 Nov 05 - 09:28 PM

The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander - once a year for the last 24 years. Better than LOTR IMHO. Taran Wanderer (4th out of 5) has had more influence on me than any other book.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 20 Nov 05 - 04:11 PM

Well in the lead from the diskworld series, which get re-read each time a new one comes out, I have Dragonsong and Dragonsinger from Anne Mcaffrey's Pern books.
Dragonsinger is ahead by about three read throughs. It just says so much about the thrill of music.