BS: Books You've Read More Than Once

Subject: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 17 Nov 05 - 11:18 PM

Which books have you enjoyed so much that you've gone back to re-read them?

Here are a few of mine:

Lord Of The Rings trilogy (three times)
The Hobbit (three times)
Call It Sleep: Phillip Roth (Twice)
Giants In The Earth: A. O. Rolvaag (Three times)

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: bobad
Date: 17 Nov 05 - 11:33 PM

The Master and Margarita: Mikhail Bulgakov
Heart of a Dog: Mikhail Bulgakov
The Tin Drum: Gunther Grass
St. Urbain's Horseman: Mordechai Richler
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz: Mordechai Richler
Water Music: T.C.Boyle
The Ginger Man: J.P.Donleavy
Black Elk Speaks: edited by John Neihardt

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 12:19 AM

I'm with you on Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Great stuff. Also the William Morris medieval fantasy tales. I read that stuff a lot in my 20's. Not so much lately.

Also read Black Elk Speaks about 3 times. "Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions" was pretty neat too.

Read "Seven Arrows" several times. It's a book you can really meditate on.

Have read certain spiritual books over and over in more recent years. I recommend the writings of Marianne Williamson and Eckhard Tolle very highly.

When I was a good deal younger, I used to read A.A.Milne repeatedly, and also Arthur Conan Doyle, H.Ryder Haggard, and H.G. Wells. And the Hornblower books by C.S. Forester...fine adventure novels.

Read Watership Down 2 or 3 times.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: harpmolly
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 12:20 AM

Almost every book I read ends up being read at least three or four times. I'm one of those people who can't get to sleep unless I read for half an hour or so first, so everything in my apartment has been gone through lots of times. But the most dog-eared books on my shelf are:

Lord of the Rings trilogy
His Dark Materials trilogy (Philip Pullman)
Terry Pratchett's Discworld series (especially the Witches books--Wyrd Sisters, Witches Abroad and Lords & Ladies in particular)
Les Miserables (Hugo)
The Talisman (Peter Straub/Stephen King)
The Dark Tower series (Stephen King, really only the first four books...the last three were a huge letdown IMHO)
Watership Down (Adams)
A Natural History of Love (Diane Ackerman)
Careful What You Wish For (Myrlin Hermes)


OK, there are a lot more, I confess. In fact, I need a bigger bookshelf. *grin*

Molly

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 12:29 AM

Another vote for The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, To Kill a Mockingbird, Their Eyes Were Watching God, House Made of Dawn, Ceremony, Go Down, Moses (rereading that right now). Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday. Lots of them.

A Sand County Almanac, Mama Makes Up Her Mind, and Boy (Dahl--also rereading now) are favorite re-read nonficiton.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: GUEST,Ingrid Frances Stark
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 02:01 AM

Nearly everything ever written by Dick Francis; Cyteen by C J Cherryh; The Hobbit by Tolkein.

IFS

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Paul Burke
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 03:43 AM

At Swim-Two_Birds by Flann O'Brien- you need to read it several times, just to get all the layers sorted out.

Including this:

'The Workmans Friend'

When things go wrong and will not come right,
Though you do the best you can,
When life looks black as the hour of night -
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

When money's tight and hard to get
And your horse has also ran,
When all you have is a heap of debt -
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

When health is bad and your heart feels strange,
And your face is pale and wan,
When doctors say you need a change,
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

When food is scarce and your larder bare
And no rashers grease your pan,
When hunger grows as your meals are rare -
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

In time of trouble and lousey strife,
You have still got a darlint plan
You still can turn to a brighter life -
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

Also another of his great books, The Third Policeman. How can something so funny be so disturbing?

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Gervase
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 04:07 AM

The Third Policeman! Wonderful book that I've read a couple of times. I love the idea of molecular interchange so that one becomes one's bicycle and has to lean against a wall to avoid falling over, while the bike gets to know the way home by itself.
Other repeat reads for me are Ulysses and Dubliners, along with most of Peter Ackroyd's canon. Now I'm just about to start going through Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey-Maturin series again. Can't wait.
Confession time, though - I've never read a single piece of Dickens all the way through.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: GUEST,DB
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 04:13 AM

I regularly re-read the works of the American SF writer/Fantasist Jack Vance. His Dying Earth book 'The Eyes of the Overworld' is a great favourite - as is 'The Last Castle', 'The Dragon Masters', 'Emphyrio', the 'Planet of Adventure' books and the 'Lyonesse' books.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Stu
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 05:10 AM

LOTR many times.

The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. My favourite book by a mile. Deeper than a very deep bit of the briny ocean deep.

On a musical note, Last Night's Fun by Ciaran Curran is an excellent book about Irish traditional music. Even though I was not born into the tradition I have played the music for years, and many people will recognise some of the observations and philosophy in this fine tome.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 05:21 AM

Oddly enough, I'm reading LOTR now, for the first time in years. Even though I've watched the movies several times, the pictures in my head when I read the books are still the ones that were there when I read it first in 1976. It took me 3 months to read then, the next time, it took a week. The copy I spent ages saving to get literally exploded with pages dropping out everywhere, so I got myself the 3 volume set in 1981. That too, is now showing distinct signs of wear. I may treat myself to a new edition one day.

Otherwise, there are very few books I don't read again - although Philip Pullman seems to be falling into that category. The first was great, the second got a bit boggy and I never even opened the third!

I'm on my fourth copy of 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe', and the Susan Cooper 'Dark is Rising sequence' gets read every year in autumn/winter... in fact, it's about time I started to read it again.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Gervase
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 06:39 AM

I'm always intrigued by how popular sci-fi and fantasy fiction are when reading preferences are aired on Mudcat. There must be scope for at least an MA thesis here - is it because folkies like that sort of thing more than most, or is it because computer-literate folkies like that sort of thing...etc?
One sees it mirrored in matters of faith on the Mudcat; Wiccan and other neo-pagan beliefs seem far more prevalent here than in the 'outside' world.
Similarly the crossover between living history enthusiasts, re-enactors and folkies: is it all tied to a desire to escape the chains of modernity by entering an alternative world?
I'm sure it can't be beyond the talents of a skilled but cynical marketing type to package an entire 'folk lifestyle' to be bought off-the-shelf in easy monthly instalments. Not that we're cliched sterotypes, of course!

Now where did I put my shaky egg? Ah yes, it's in the chalice on top of the H.P.Lovecraft...

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Dave Earl
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 06:46 AM

Gervase,

You were a journalist.

Go off and start compiling the part-work and you'll have any number of subscibers from round here!

Dave
p.s I here you move into the house soon. Hope all goes well

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Moses
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 07:05 AM

Another vote for LOTR and The Hobbit (read several times over the years )although I've only read them out loud once, years ago, to my two girls as books at bedtime.

Took several months.

Actually I probably did read them out loud twice as each night we would discuss the previous evenings chapter and find that one or the other had dropped off before the end so we had to re-cap from the last remembered part of the story.

Great books and the girls still remember those months fondly. They buy me the Tolkien calendar each year.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 07:19 AM

one of the unexpected pleasures of late age is re-reading the books you read when you were young, and picking up all sorts of subtleties and cadences that you missed when you were young and dim.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Cluin
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 07:20 AM

Rereading Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency right now since the old paperback turned up when I was looking for something else.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 08:00 AM

"Trout Fishing In America" - Richard Brautigan

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: bobad
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 08:26 AM

Yes LH "Lame Deer Seeker of Visions" is pretty neat.

I've owned two copies of "Black Elk Speaks", loaned them out to never see them again. I can only hope that they are out there being passed around and disseminating some of that Oglala Sioux wisdom.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: dwditty
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 08:29 AM

Bobad, I had forgotten all about Heart of A Dog...now I am going to have to go order it today for a re-read.

Anam Cara - John O'Donohue
Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer - Kenneth Patchen
The World Don't Owe Me Nothin' - David "Honeyboy" Edwards

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Rapparee
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 08:41 AM

Ah...I'm a librarian. I honestly can't remember all of them.

But I'll put this into perspective: I don't purchase for myself anything I don't plan to re-read. There are about 5,900 books in the house at the moment. There are 30 shelves of books in my office, 36 in the other room. Each shelf holds about 30 books. That's about 1,980 books within 50 feet of me here in the basement, and that only counts those on the shelving units we bought, not the books on the "built in" shelves. Nor does it count the books upstairs.

Best way to tell you: the books run the gamut from Robert Heinlein to Dana Stabenow to Nicolai Gogol to Marie Webster to Shakespeare to Chaucer to Dee Brown to Twain to Bill Watterson to Hofstadter to Hawking to Ed McGivern -- and beyond.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: jacqui.c
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 08:42 AM

The Stand - Stephen King

Too many books, not enough time to reread too often!

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: kendall
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 09:33 AM

The Odyssey.
Silverlock (Myers)at least 4 times.
All of C.S. Forrester's books.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: ranger1
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 09:41 AM

The Lord of the Rings trilogy
The Dark is Rising series
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
the JP Beaumont series by J.A. Jance

And so many, many more...

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 09:49 AM

I reread Jim Harrison. Beautiful books. His poetry is beyond me though,way too intellectual for the likes of me.

Some of the goodies:
Wolf
Farmer
Legends of the Fall
Dalva
True North

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Peace
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 10:26 AM

Cities in Flight
Lucifer's Hammer
Tom Sawyer
Bible
Time Enough for Love
The Little Red Book
On War
The Face of Battle
Great Expectations
The Complete Works of Edmund Spenser
Much of Shakespeare
HMS Ulysses

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 11:00 AM

Wow! A lot fo great stuff here!

LH: Put me down for multiple re-reads of Watership Down A.A. Milne and Arthur Conan Doyle (Including the Professor Challenger books, which are a real hoot.)

Gervase: H.P. Lovecraft is a repeated read for me, too. Nothing could ever top the Dunwich Horror, for me. And add Shirley Jackson's books... especially The House On Haunted Hill which was first made into a pretty good movie and more recently into something worthy of Mystery Science Theater.

Moses: I read aloud the Hobbit and all three books of LOTR to my two sons, when my youngest was still in a playpen. When I finally finished, I asked them what they wanted me to read to them next, they both immediately chimed in "Read The Hobbit and Lord Of The Rings again." And I did.

Last week, I picked up a copy of No Man Is An Island by Thomas Merton, which I haven't read since college days. I'm looking forward to re-reading it.

The Thurber Carnival holds a place of honor in our downstairs bathroom, along with Calvin and Hobbes, Pogo, The Far Side and more recently, Get Fuzzy.

I read sections of the bible fairly regularly but never have read the whole book. We're read the Purpose Filled Life (or whatever the title is, twice.) Maybe I need to read the title again.

And how could I forget The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter? That book is very special to my heart, and I go back to it repeatedly.

'Scuse me while I go read..

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Beer
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 11:03 AM

Aztec---Gary Jennings
Raptor----Gary Jennings
Genesis---W.A. Harbinson
Sacajawea--- Anne Lee Waldo
Follow the River---James Alexander Thorm
In Search of the Miraculous---P.D. Ouspensky

Ther are some great and wonderful readings out there but these are the ones that I can remember reading twice.
Beer

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 01:16 PM

Huckleberry Finn is one I started reading to the kids but I think they went ahead and read it on their own so they wouldn't have to wait to hear what happened next. I've read it a couple of other times myself.

A friend who teaches philosophy is convinced that LOTR is meant to be read outloud and has done so several times, any time he has a willing long-term audience.

When you read one out loud I think you can tell if the writer spoke the words or just wrote them. Thoreau, no. Faulkner, yes.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Peace
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 01:18 PM

Dylan Thomas seems to have done both, IMO.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 01:50 PM

When I was young and even stupider than I am now, I read Dylan's Child's Christmas in Wales aloud for an audience. Put on my best, undulating Welsh accent and boomed it out to great applause. Months later I heard a recording of Thomas from the BBC in 1929 (I think) reading the same piece. He had a plummy English accent! What's that about?

I read it every year, without fail.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Wesley S
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 01:51 PM

Ragtime
Alas,Babylon
The Travis McGee series
Watermelon Sugar
Will Henry westerns
Little Big Man
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Gervase
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 03:18 PM

Finnegans Wake is one of those books that just cries out to be read aloud. On the page it's complex, abstruse and downright impenetrable at times, but on the ear it's funny, mellifluous and full of punning surprises. If you haven't the heart to plunge into the deep end, take a look at the 'reduced' version edited by Anthony Burgess.
On reading aloud generally, I think that sometimes the authors themselves haven't the right voice. I've got a recording of Joyce reading from the Wake, and it's not a patch on some other, more 'actorly' renditions. And Richard Burton's voice, for me, is the voice for Dylan Thomas.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 03:26 PM

Found it ... you can hear Dylan Thomas here Child's Christmas in Wales.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 03:27 PM

I'll try that again: HERE!

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: number 6
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 03:50 PM

The Illuminatus Trilogy .. by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson

Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities .. by Charles Dickens

Red Earth, White Lies .. by Vine Deloria

Moby Dick .. by Herman Melville

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: kendall
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 04:17 PM

Oh yes, Moby Dick

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 04:21 PM

"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"...but not recently.

several by Heinlein, and other Sci-Fi...especially "The Mote in God's Eye" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Cluin
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 04:27 PM

The phone book.

But not the whole thing.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: bfdk
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 04:48 PM

Like Liz, Rapaire and others I often read books more than once. In fact, the books I've only read once were usually the ones I didn't like that much..

One that I've re-read several times is "Frozen in Time" by Owen Beattie and John Geiger. I remember buying the book while visiting Edinburg back in 1987, at a time when the book was brand new (even had to get it hardback, as no paperback was as yet available). I started reading the book on the train going down to Harwich on the way home, and I continued reading while on the ferry, finishing it at around 3 in the morning sitting all alone in the corridor outside the cabin so as not to disturb my 3 cabin companions. I simply couldn't put it down.

Others are Betty Tootell's "All four engines have failed" and Piers Paul Read's "Alive". I've re-read all Harry Potter books, but have only read LOTR once (in Danish). I intend to read in again in English sometime, though ;-) I've re-read lots of children's books, like all of the "Little House" series, Anne of Green Gables and books of that ilk. I've read and re-read most of what Simon Wiesenthal ever wrote.

For anybody interested in good historical novels I'll warmly recommend Swedish author Ian Guillou's Crusades Trilogy which has now been translated into English. A Must-Read!!

Quite a mixed bag, as a matter of fact..

Bente

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: robomatic
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 04:51 PM

"Little Big Man" by Berger
For sleepytime, the John D. MacDonald Travis McGee series
Rhodes "The Making Of The Atomic Bomb"

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Beer
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 05:17 PM

Forgot to include Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: jacqui.c
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 05:38 PM

Forgot the Dune series!

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 05:45 PM

If a book isn't worth reading again it wasn't really worth reading once.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Peace
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 06:01 PM

E R Burroughs' Mars series
The Moons of Jupiter (A Munro)
SAS Survival Handbook
Travels With Charley
Dance of the Happy Shades (A Munro)
Friend of my Youth (A Munro)
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Most of Twain's stuff, with an especial love for 'Life on the Mississippi' and 'Roughing It'
The Bean Trees
The Stone Angel

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 06:52 PM

I've read the entire Sherlock Holmes corpus about 3 times, I think. I find that after about a 10-year interval, I can't remember how most of the stories end, so it's like reading them for the first time.

I read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn several times as a kid. It was a long time before I realized that the editions I had then were dumbed-down abridgements for kids. I reread Huckleberry Finn recently, an unabridged edition, and was surprised how much was new to me. I enjoyed it immensely.

Likewise, I read Great Expectations long ago (or thought I had) because it was a school assignment. I reread it recently and had the same experience. So much was new to me that I figure that must have been an abridgement, too.

I'm pretty sure I read 1984 more than once. I probably should read it again. In fact, it probably would be a good idea to reread a lot of the books I enjoyed as a kid.

Tom Sawyer, though, was a disappointment when I tried rereading it as an adult. I don't think I ever finished it.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 09:02 PM

Too many to mention. Here are some I have read more than 3 times. Orwell: 1984, Animal Farm, Collected Essays.... Koestler: Darkness at Noon, autobiographical books, The Age of Longing. Warren: All the King's Men. Kornbluth: Syndic. Carroll: the Alice books. Agee: A Death in the Family. Heinlein: The Man Who Sold the Moon, The Green Hills of Earth. Burdick: The Ninth Wave. Huie: The Revolt of Mamie Stover. Hersey: The Wall. Kipling: Captains Courageous. Skinner: Walden Two. Stewart: Storm, Earth Abides. Twain: Huckleberry Finn. Wylie: Finnley Wrenn, Opus 21. Young: The Rise of the Meritocracy. Hoggart: The Uses of Literacy. Macdonald: Memoirs of a Revolutionist, Against the American Grain. Wiener, Cybernetics. Cooke: Six Men. Mencken: Vintage, Prejudices, Chrestomathy. Russell, History of Western Philosophy.

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

||: The right to hurt people's feelings is the only right worth having. :||

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Rapparee
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 09:10 PM

Here is a list of the books on my desk, waiting to be returned to their little beds on the shelves. A few I haven't yet read, so I've marked them with a *. The rest are re-reads. Remember, this is only a sample that's immediately at hand.

Heinlein: Glory Road.
Bestul: The Last river rat.*
Bragg: More than petticoats.
Rast: The Whole dam story.
Lincoln: A Private disgrace: Lizzie Borden by daylight.
Clarke: Profiles of the future.
Stabenow, et al.: Wild crimes.
Taylore: Jumping fire.
Bratt: Trails of yesterday.
Beck: Shamans and kushtakas.
Kanuit: Tales from the edge.*
Brown: Alcan trail blazers.
Adney: The Klondike stampede.
Tremblay: On patrol.
Stabenow, et al.: Powers of detection. (Ahem -- autographed to me!)
Bryson: A Short history of nearly everything.
Marriott: Hell on horses & women.
Gray: Women of the west.
Woodman: Unraveling the Franklin mystery: Inuit testimony.
Twitty: Riches to rust.

The reason that two haven't yet been read is because I just got them.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 09:15 PM

Almost every book I ever enjoyed, from Scott, Chesterton and Dickens, through Conan Doyle, Wells and Verne, via Charteris, Asimov, Wheatley and Fleming, to King and Clancy, and dozens of others beside.

The only books I haven't read more than once were those that so bored me, I didn't finish them the first time.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Peace
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 09:18 PM

Dang. I have left off Asimov, Doyle, Wheatley (whose "The Devil Rides Out" scared the bejeebers outta me when I was young--I mean sleep with the lights ON)--thanks for the memory, Don.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Amos
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 09:22 PM

Dictionaries, R.P. Warren (The Cave and All the King's Men), East of Eden and anything else of Steinbeck's, several Hemingways, any Heinleins I can get, anything by Barbara Kingsolver, and certain perennials like The Reader Over Your Shoulder, Elements of Style and assorted reference books. I have re-read some of Hawthorne, some of Joyce, and numerous lesser lights I cannot recall.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Deckman
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 09:43 PM

The "Kalavala."

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Rapparee
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 09:56 PM

Heck, Deckman, I've read THAT!

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Midchuck
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 10:24 PM

Hmmmmm...Lesseee....

I've probably read Winnie-the-Pooh more than anything else, if you count having it read to me when I was little, reading it to myself very shortly thereafter, and to my children, out loud, from when they were little nearly into college - it got ritualized.

Jerry said:

The Thurber Carnival holds a place of honor in our downstairs bathroom, along with Calvin and Hobbes, Pogo, The Far Side and more recently, Get Fuzzy.

That's scary. There shouldn't be two minds like me in the universe.

Has it occurred to you that the difference between Thurber and Kelly is only that in Thurber they yell "The dam has broken!" and in Pogo, "The dam is bust!"?

Other multiple reads:

Dune (but not the sequels. They go downhill in quality fast.
Ringworld (the sequels are better, but still fall short.)
Atlas Shrugged (a quasi-religious epiphany when I was 20. At 64, crazier than a s***house rat, but has a few sound principals down underneath it.)
The Mote in God's Eye.
Most of David Drake's stuff, particularly the Hammer's Slammers universe stories, and the Drake and Flint Belisarius series.
Brust's Jhereg series - pretty much all of them.
Most of Heinlein pre-stroke. I have the first printing of "Between Planets" that I got at age 10 or 11.
Most of the Peter Bowen Gabriel DuPre books.

Most recent multiple read is S. M. Stirling's Dies the Fire. Only published a year ago August. Get it if you ever read any SF or fantasy.

But I ramble on.

Peter.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Deckman
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 10:43 PM

Rapaire ... yah ... but have you also read "The Kalavede?" That's the Estonian version. Bob

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Peter T.
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 11:00 PM

Shakespeare, as much and as often as possible. I try and read it all once a year -- this was something I learned many years ago from "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn", which I have reread about three times (thank you Betty). I carry a play or the poems around with me for subway or whatever. It is amazing how much time you can find. But I can't really read the early History plays (till you get to Richard III in about 1591) very often, and I confess to skipping Two Gentlemen of Verona and a Comedy of Errors sometimes in the cycle. Probably Twelfth Night is the one I reread the most. It is just a habit I picked up when I was 16 and never let go of, not something I parade, but it has been worth it, heaven knows.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 12:09 AM

I loved Travels With Charley and Moby Dick, and have read both more than once.

As a child I reread The Secret Garden many times. And there was a young teen novel called Mrs. Mike. Great stuff!

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 08:41 AM

I'm re-reading No Man Is An Island right now... read it in college and it had a profound effect on me. As did The Little Prince. How could I possibly forget The Little Prince? A life-shaper, as was, is and ever shall be Thomas Merton's writings.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: bobad
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 11:08 AM

Must add "Be Here Now" by Baba Ram Dass to my list.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Rapparee
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 03:11 PM

Dang it, Bob, now that I know it exists I'll have to read it! Fie upon you, Sirrah! Now I must learn Estonian!





Oh, heck, I'll just read it in translation, like I did the Kalavala.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: ranger1
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 05:31 PM

A few others I forgot are:
Cry the Beloved Country, Alan Paton
The Power of One, Bryce Courtenay
Beachcombing for a Shipwrecked God, Joe Coomer
Most of Roger Zelazny's older stuff, especially his short stories
Nine Mile Bridge, Helen Hamlin

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Peace
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 05:36 PM

Ellison Wonderland
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: *Laura*
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 05:45 PM

Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights (countless times - best book ever)
Thomas Hardy - Tess of the D'Urbervilles (about 5 times)
Tolkien - Lord of the Rings (about 6 times - roughly once a year or so)
Elaine Feinstein - Loving Brecht
John Irving - The Cider House Rules
Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale

Oh dear - I could go on forever! I don't think there's a book on my shelf that hasn't been read at least twice.

xLx

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Deckman
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 07:48 PM

Rapaire ...For Inglish translations of "the Kalavala," I've found the 'Peabody' to be the best, although it is the least poetic. And poetry is so much of these tales. The "Peabody" translation was done in Indiana in 1976, as I recall ... but I'm tired and I might not overly accurate now.

My dim memory says that "The Kalavede" was written by (translated?) by an American author named "George Goble." (I hope I'm accurate here).

These stories were my late Father's bedtime stories. They were always held up, by my Finnish Grandmother, as the example to follow.

CHEERS, Bob(deckman)Nelson

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Linda Goodman Zebooker
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 11:23 PM

Books I feel compelled to re-read every few years: 1. My father's copy of Antoine Saint-Exupery's Wind, Sand & Stars. The heavy cotton pages and woodcut pictures add a bit to these true accounts of an early air-mail pioneer in the desert that I never get tired of. 2. Re-Birth (also known as The Chrysalids), by John Wyndham. The telepathy the friends share "thinking together" reminds me now of...the mudcat. 3.The Nun's Story by Kathryn Hulme and 4.I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg...I get drawn into these worlds very different from my own.

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Gorgeous Gary
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 11:35 PM

Well, about the only books I can claim to have re-read fully are Larry Niven's "Fallen Angels" and Lois McMaster Bujold's "Falling Free", "Shards of Honor" and "Barrayar". There are many books I'd **like** to read again, but with over 50 books on my current bought-and-to-be-read pile (and at least a dozen books of Sheryl I need to swipe) I don't have **time** for re-reading.

Meanwhile, I'm amused at how many of the books listed here I either can sing songs about or can point folks at songs about. Most notably Dark is Rising and Silverlock (not to mention Harry Potter and LOTR).

-- Gary

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Kaleea
Date: 20 Nov 05 - 12:21 AM

Wow! Alot of us have read alot of the same books alot of times. Scary monster!!
   As a little girl, my fave was "Heidi," or else Grimm's Fairy Tales, or else Hans Brinker & the Silver Skates. My younger brother were bookaholics. Mother took us to the Library each week, and when we read through all of our books we'd read the World Book Encyclopedia (1954 edition) or. I also dearly loved a one of my Daddy's college textbooks (early 40's), "Writers of the Western World." In it I was reading, or attempting to read among other things, Poe's "The Raven" at about age 8 or so. Alas & alack, I don't know what became of it.
   I also have read Black Elk Speaks several times, as well as a few others of him & some by his family members.

Other books I read over & over & over tend to be:
Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda
(& other books by him & by Daya Mata)
Light From Many Lamps edited by Lillian Eichler Watson
(the one I keep on my nightstand!)
Anything I can get by P. G. Wodehouse, which is rare.

   I could go on about books without end!

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: cptsnapper
Date: 20 Nov 05 - 04:23 AM

Anything by P. G. Wodehouse, also The Sword In The Stone & The Once & Future King

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Flash Company
Date: 20 Nov 05 - 10:25 AM

Lord of the Rings & The Hobbit,
All of David Eddings Belgarion and Sparhawk stories
All of Discworld.
The John Fielding mysteries by Bruce Alexander
The Barry Hughart 'Master Li trilogy'.
Leslie Charteris, P C Wren, Ike Asimov, John Wyndham and others.
Not sure how I ever find time to do anything else.
Do like new ones as well, Currently reading Neil Gaiman's 'Anansi Boys',

FC

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Deckman
Date: 20 Nov 05 - 10:34 AM

In addition:

All of John Steinbeck

All of Ivan Doig. Bob

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Rapparee
Date: 20 Nov 05 - 01:58 PM

Ah, the Kalavala:

By the shores of Gitchee-Gummi
By the shining Big Sea Waters....

(Yes, Bob, I know, I know.)

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Deckman
Date: 20 Nov 05 - 03:03 PM

"Stood the teepee of Nokomiss" ...

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Nov 05 - 03:05 PM

Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini – don't know how many times. Several.

Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini – couple of times.

Lord of the Rings trilogy, preceded by The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien – three times so far (not counting watching tapes of the LOTR movies – couple of times.

The Star Kings and the sequel, Return to the Stars by Edmond Hamilton – three or four times. Hamilton wasn't all that skillful a writer and he's pretty dated as far as science fiction goes. Pure space opera. But, boy, could that sucker tell a story! The various "Star Trek" writers would have done well to have read some of Hamilton's stuff!

The Sparrow and Children of God by Mary Doria Russell – a couple of times.

Several Shakespearean plays, but I'd rather see them staged than to read them. Same with Cyrano de Bergerac by Rostand. Hard to beat Jose Ferrar's performance in the 1950 movie. First videotape I ever bought.

Wayfaring Stranger by Burl Ives – twice. Learned a lot about him that I didn't know before. He was studying to be a singer of lieder—art songs—when he suddenly realized that he already had a huge repertoire of songs that he'd learned from his grandmother and while bumming around the country, the kind of songs very few people he knew of at the time seemed to be doing. The rest is history.

The Mayor of MacDougal Street by Dave Van Ronk – I've only read it once so far, but I'm going to read it again very soon. His and my performing styles are far different, but his experiences on the East Coast and mine on the West have some fairly intriguing parallels. He says a lot that rings very large bells for me.

Old Troubadour by Gregory d'Alessio, about Carl Sandburg.   D'Alessio is an artist and cartoonist by trade (many cartoons in "The New Yorker") and an active member of the New York Classic Guitar Society. Sandburg used to stay with d'Alessio whenever he was in New York City, as did several other famous people. Sandburg was avidly interested in the classic guitar, even though his playing, including his song accompaniments, was weird, to say the least. He met Segovia at d'Alessio's pad. Segovia would offer to tune Sandburg's guitar for him before he played (self-defense, perhaps? Sandburg subscribed to the "That's close enough for folk music" theory of tuning). And he also met Marilyn Monroe at d'Alessio's place. She delighted in taking dictation from him when he had a sudden inspiration for a poem. The book is full of stories and anecdotes about Sandburg, plus many photographs and a lot of d'Alessio's sketches and cartoons of Sandburg. I didn't even know of the book's existence until Bob (Deckman) Nelson gave me a copy. Thanks again, Bob!

There are a number of others that don't immediately spring to mind.

I presume that we're not asking about books that we don't necessarily pick up and read straight through, at least more than once, like dictionaries and encyclopedias, or things like Strunk and White's Elements of Style, but refer to with some frequency. I have shelf after shelf of non-fiction on history, science, political theory, various biographies and autobiographies, and a whole bunch of reference books that I grab pretty often, not to mention song books up the ziggy, including collections like Sharp's English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, several books by the Lomaxes, Sandburg, books about the folk music scene such as David Hajdu's Positively 4th Street, Jack Holtzman's Follow the Music, bios and autobios of Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Jean Ritchie and others—the usual stuff. Plus the F. J. Child collection on CD-ROM. I've read most of these and refer to them frequently, but I presume this is not really what the question is about.

Perhaps in that same catagory are collections of comic strips and cartoons, such as old "Flash Gordon," "Buck Rogers," "Prince Valiant," "Peanuts," and "Calvin and Hobbes," and such.

Between my wife, Barbara (who is also a book-freak—and a librarian) and me, we have so many bookshelves lining the walls that if the walls were ever to collapse and fall out, we'd probably not be aware of it.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Books You've Read More Than Once
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 20 Nov 05 - 03:48 PM

Thanks for the wonderful response, Don!

Jerry

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.

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: gnu
Date: 22 Nov 05 - 02:28 PM

Trinity, by Leon Uris.

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Bat Goddess
Date: 28 Nov 05 - 11:22 AM

refresh

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: 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: 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 - 03:34 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 - 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: 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 - 04:40 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: 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 - 04:53 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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 - 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: 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: 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: 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:
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